Airbender's Child: Other Perspectives
by SCWLC
Summary: As promised, other PoVs from the AC series. These will vary in length a lot.
1. Mother

Title: Airbender's Child: Other Perspectives

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own nothing here that anyone recognises.

Rating: Call it a T for the sake of my not knowing what rating it'll actually be in the end.

Summary: Ursa started hating early.

Notes: So, here's the first of my alternate PoVs on the Airbender's Child series, it's a bit of something. Almost no dialogue, but I wasn't really able to get any in.

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><p>Ultimately, Ursa knew that she had to give that monster of a husband of hers a firebending child. He wouldn't, his whole family wouldn't expect any less. That said, she had felt such joy when she'd given birth and the first thing little Aiko had done was sneeze herself into the air.<p>

This one was going differently, however. This child was coming too early, too fast and everything felt wrong. This one wasn't even going to have a chance. Then the child was brought forth, and he was small and weak and seemed to have no bending at all. All benders tended to accidentally cause some minor mayhem in the delivery room at birth. Her own mother said that she'd managed to knock the midwife over when she was born.

This one didn't seem to have any bending at all. Ursa looked down at him in his swaddling and sighed. He wasn't strong enough. Her little Zuko wasn't going to make it, and the fact that her airbending was strong enough to cull the firebending in his blood made her want him to make it all the more. She wanted her children, Aiko and Zuko both, to prove they could overcome their bad blood.

Ozai, that despicable firebender, had come by and utterly dismissed his own child because the baby was born ill. It made her sick that any man could do such a thing to his own children. It just went to show how fundamentally terrible they were as a people.

Night after night she'd sit beside his cradle, holding his tiny perfect hands in hers and hoping he'd be fine. Every breath in was a victory, and every wait between was a trough of despair. He was so little and handsome and perfect, she couldn't help but love him, even if he wasn't a bender.

Eventually he got better. It became clear he wasn't going to die and he could even travel. Ursa arranged to take him with her to her home enclave, intending to introduce him to his sister.

Aiko was enamoured of her little brother, chattering away a mile a minute about all the fun things she'd do with him once he was old enough to play with her properly, and how she was going to teach him bending. Ursa didn't have the heart to tell her daughter yet that the youngest member of their family would never bend.

She was forced to leave again, taking Zuko with her back to the palace. The trip back, however, was marred at the end by a storm. Zuko was understandably upset by the noise and discomfort of the quick dash through the rain. As they got inside, a sudden warmth at her chest made her look down. Zuko's face was scrunched up, and she would have thought it was adorable, if it weren't utterly clear what he was doing.

He was bending his swaddling warmer. It was an incredible display from a baby firebender, most of whom could only light the bedsheets on fire by accident.

Ozai was there to greet her. With a sense of detachment, barely clinging to a facade of calm, Ursa told him, "Your son, it seems, is a firebender after all."

"Is he?" the man asked. "How can you tell? Has he sparked?"

"No," she told him. "He's warming his blankets by himself."

Her husband snorted in disgust, but still took the time to look at his son. "At least he takes after me in looks," he said. Then he strode off.

By the time she got to the nursery with Zuko, Ursa was shaking. She passed him to his nurses and hurried away to think. She'd taken the boy to the enclave. He was too young to remember, and there would be no reason to take him now, but still . . .

Then a thought occurred to her. If she did this right, if she raised him right, perhaps there was a chance she could get a firebender with morals near or onto the throne. She could contact people about arranging a few assassinations once the boy was old enough to take the throne in any reasonable way. She paced her rooms, planning and thinking. Finally, however, she couldn't stand it anymore and went to look in on Zuko. He was sleeping, looking angelic, small and beautiful as he always did.

For a moment, Ursa considered the possibilities of raising him to be a good man. What a coup that would be, to raise a firebender to be a decent human being. Zuko shifted a little in his sleep, and she felt a smile on her lips. He was her son, he didn't have to be evil like his father.

Then he, as the firebenders called it, sparked. The little flame came off his fist, hitting the crib's side and causing a loud cracking noise to wake him. Frightened, he began to cry, and his nurses came running.

Ursa reached for him, but the sight of true proof that he was a firebender halted her hands. Zuko was reaching for her, but she backed away. She couldn't let herself get sucked in by weeping golden eyes.

She would raise him to be the best person he could be, and she would make sure that someday he took the throne. But he was a firebender. Good wasn't in his nature and there was nothing she could do about that. She straightened herself firmly and turned away. Best that she not become too attached.

Zuko was screaming in earnest now, clearly frightened and confused that his mother wasn't coming. She reminded herself that he was his father's son and that she couldn't afford to lose her detachment and start looking at firebenders as decent people. They were monsters and she'd given birth to a monster.

Her heart was bleeding as she walked away and she felt even sicker when Ozai told her how much he approved of her decision to strengthen their son by not coddling him.

Two years later, Azula was brought screaming and flaming everything within reach, into the world. When she burned her own mother, Ursa felt justified in her beliefs. For the first time that day she slapped Zuko when he got too noisy.

She was never going to fall for his crocodile tears again.


	2. Herds and home

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Incident number two. I was reminded I should give credit where it's due, and tell you that last week was one of AnaAza's requests. This week's incident comes from a request by ebonjadethorn. So now you know.

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><p>She was very very hungry. When her mother rolled over, she knew she had to get to her mother's pink poky bits to get food. That was when the trouble started. She was so much smaller than her brothers and sisters that they all shoved her away and she couldn't get closer.<p>

Grumbling and whining, she struggled to get closer, but the others were all in the way. She struggled, but she was tired from being born and very weak, and she couldn't get up top to the poky thing food.

That was when something wonderful happened. She felt something lift her up, but before she could feel more than a bit of worry, it shoved her at a free poky thing near the top. A moment later she was happily suckling and having her first meal. Her siblings were still eating when she was finished. She wasn't as big as them, so that meant that when she stopped eating, she kind of slid down and landed with a thump. Hunger satisfied, she wriggled around to see if she could find the thing that had helped her get to the food.

Off to the side she saw two . . . somethings. They weren't bisons like her family. But they were something moving and alive. There was one bigger one, and it was making unpleasant noises at the smaller one. She made her way closer and saw the bigger one narrow its eyes at the smaller one, then poke at it a few times before going away angrily.

The smaller one abruptly sat down on the ground and started to make noises. They weren't good noises either. They were sad noises. She wasn't sure how she knew they were sad noises, but a few moments before one of her siblings had got their tail stepped on, and some of the noises that were made were kind of like these noises. Had someone stepped on this . . . whatever it was? Maybe the bigger one had stepped on the smaller one.

She crept closer and poked it with her nose. Its head came up, the strange furless face all wet. The Smaller Thing held out a limb, and she sniffed at it. The scent was . . . now she remembered! It smelled like the smell from when she was picked up to her mother's poky food thing! This was the lifter. She moved closer, wanting to know more about it.

The limb changed direction, but before she could wonder about it, the Lifter was using his limb to rub her back and head. It felt nice. Then it scratched at some spots on her shoulders, and she rumbled in bliss. While her siblings were eating, she was getting this wonderful scratching. As the scratching went on, the Lifter began to make noises. She didn't understand any of them, but its voice was very soothing.

She fell asleep to its voice.

Over time, her mother and the other bisons taught her about understanding the humans, and she learned the Lifter was a calf like her, named LeeZuko. She also learned that the other humans didn't seem to like LeeZuko much and that they didn't like that he helped her to suckle. She also learned his name for her, Shuga.

He talked to her a lot whenever he was in the enclave, but he wasn't always there. Shuga soon found out that he was brought to the enclave by his mother, who was, in her opinion, a terrible human. She was the bigger human who had been making all those unpleasant sounds at Shuga's Lifter and Shuga made her opinion known whenever she could. Naturally, this meant Badmother didn't like Shuga either, but the bison could live with that.

When Shuga first started flying, LeeZuko began to bring paper to her. Maps, he called them. He would point at things on the maps and explain how it was a picture of where road and rivers and ocean and forests were. "See, Shuga, this is the Shintaku River, that goes from here to the bay, and if you sail in a straight line, you get to the capital." She bent down and eyed it.

The next time her mother took them on a training flight, she looked around and spotted the river. It was an awful long way, it looked, from their island to the island where LeeZuko said he had to be half the time. Shuga decided then and there she'd train up and follow him.

When she finally did, the flight was really really tiring, but all that time with LeeZuko and his maps meant she was able to see where she was going. Her mother had warned her about the humans with the red shiny clothing and the shiny metal things on them. So Shuga avoided them.

Exhausted, she finally reached the palace and found her way to her human's room. When he hugged her and scratched her all over in all the good places and told her over and over that he loved her and thought she was the best bison in the whole herd, she knew she'd done the right thing. He hid her in an abandoned farm nearby and came to see her with fruits and things that were so tasty, Shuga decided they were a pretty good reward for making her Lifter happy.

Every night she was there, he'd come out to her, bringing blankets and a pillow, and he'd climb onto her back to sleep. He told her all about what terrible things Badmother had said to him that day, and when Badmother had hit him. He also told her about Badsisterzula, who did mean things to make his father angry with him, and Badsisterko who seemed to think Badmother was right when she said awful things about LeeZuko. She didn't even want to think about LeeZuko's father.

She flew back and forth, improving her endurance and learning how to sneak, and when she was big enough to carry Zuko, all that training came in handy for winning the acrobatic flying competitions.

The day came when Zuko stopped coming and Shuga heard Badmother telling people that she'd had to leave him behind. With Badsisterzula, who was worse than Badsisterko, and meant he wouldn't be coming to visit Shuga at the enclave anymore.

So, with her mother's cranky bellows in her ears, Shuga left the herd to go to LeeZuko. Because he didn't have a proper herd and she knew she was his whole herd.

When LeeZuko's father hurt his calf and made him go, she followed again. This time, they left together. Shuga missed her herd and other bisons sometimes, but LeeZuko never had any herd but her, so she travelled with him in their little herd of two.

She never gave up hope, though, that LeeZuko would find himself a herd of his own, and that she'd be able to have calves, so his calves and hers could grow up together.


	3. Runaway

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: So it's taken me forever to get here, and I'm really sorry if this disappoints. I'll try to give you guys some slightly better Iroh-hunting-for-Zuko incidents, but I really couldn't get anything else done on this one. Ravirn of the Infinite was the one who more or less proposed this section. I have done my best. Also, I'm really trying to get back into the swing of things, but I think my muse has headed off to go penguin sledding while I was adjusting to the new schedule.

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><p>"Prince Zuko, it is time to get up," Iroh said as he knocked on his nephew's door.<p>

They had been on this new quest for a week, the time it had taken them to reach an Earth Kingdom port city where a library of texts on the Avatar was to be found. Zuko had taken this ridiculous wild swangoose chase extremely seriously.

There was no response, so he rapped again. "Prince Zuko, you must get up to begin your training for the day."

Silence.

"If you do not get up we will be unable to begin the research you demanded on the Avatar," Iroh tried.

The quiet within the room was beginning to unsettle him. Could his nephew have become ill? Zuko had never been the type to sulk in his room, and during the past week he had been about on all the levels of the ship, constantly making his presence known to everyone, declaiming on his need to capture the Avatar and regain his honour.

That was it. He had to broach his nephew's privacy, and he would simply hope that he would come upon a sulking and angry boy, determined to be left alone to his self-indulgence in grief. Iroh opened the door, walked in and found the room empty. On the small writing desk in the corner of the room there was a note.

_Dear Uncle,_

_I know that you're disappointed in me, everyone is. So I'm not going back. I'm not going to try to find the Avatar because I don't deserve to go back. I know you think that helping me will make up for what happened to Lu Ten, but I'm not him and I don't want you thinking that. You shouldn't feel like it was your fault, and you don't have to make up for it by helping me. Father has made it completely clear that I am no longer a prince of the Fire Nation so you have no more obligations toward me._

_I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Thank you for helping me train my bending, thank you for everything nice you've done for me. _

_I'm sorry,_

_Zuko_

His head came up and he looked around the room, truly noting for the first time that Zuko's beloved twin dao blades were missing from the wall, as was his meditation altar. A moment of quick searching in the room revealed that his clothes were gone too.

Iroh spun and headed to the roster showing who had been on night watch while they had anchored at the docks. A quick check and he was banging on the door of the first of the men. The man opened the door looking equal parts irate and asleep. He snapped awake very quickly when he saw who had disturbed him. "General?" he asked, looking perplexed.

Having no patience while his nephew was quite possibly in enormous amounts of trouble, Iroh demanded, "Last night, when you were on watch, did you see anything usual? By that I mean anything at all that was even remotely out of the ordinary." He didn't bother with serenity, with the wise and genial uncle facade he'd cultivated to hide behind to survive his brother's regime.

The soldier reacted to the return of the Dragon of the West by snapping straight. "No, sir. I was at my post on time and I don't recall anything at all that was out of the ordinary."

It was only natural, he supposed, just to thwart him, that it was the last of the seven night watchmen who had seen anything unusual. "About two hours before dawn, General, the ship beside us docked. I will admit to have watched it more than the other parts of my watch, as it was the most likely place any trouble might come from. I thought I had heard something in the water on the other side, but by the time I looked there was nothing."

Another time and place, Iroh would have been proud of Zuko's skill at subterfuge and escape. All his posturing had concealed his true motives well, irritating the crew into ignoring him as best they could and convincing his own uncle that he was uninterested in anything but completing the impossible task set him by his father. He stormed through the ship, mustering the men to search the town.

They were too late. In the hours since Zuko had fled he had not only passed through the town and purchased an ostrich horse, but following the tracks, they eventually found it happily eating grass by the roadside and footprints leading up to a nearby rocky plateau. After that, there wasn't a single trace of him anywhere to be found.

It took a year of fruitless searching in the ship before Iroh was forced to send the men back. He chose not to give up his search, however, as contacts among the White Lotus kept assuring him that Zuko had been glimpsed here and there.

It wasn't until he was truly travelling on his own, sachets of money stored in the ostrich-horse-drawn wagon he'd arranged for the purpose of searching that he finally found a trace of Zuko from someone who was not White Lotus. "Lee?" the man had asked when shown the drawing of Zuko. "I remember that boy like it was yesterday. Only one to help when my cow pigs got loose and started eating everything in my fields. When everyone else was laughing at me, he up and helped." The man had half turned to the rest of the noodle shop, half shouting, "Unlike some people!"

"Yen, your cow pigs get out every week. That's why we don't bother helping when you make a fuss," one of the other farmers said with a laugh.

Through the window, a cow-pig wandered by and Yen squawked in dismay. "No!" he ran out the door, and Iroh followed. "Bao! No!" wailed the man as he began trying to drag the animal off.

Intent on perhaps getting more information out of the farmer, Iroh helped, amused despite himself at the gesticulations and cries of despair from Yen.

"You're as kind as young Lee was," the man said when the animal was (rather loosely) corralled once more. "Why are you looking for him? Is he your son?" He shot a suspicious look at Iroh. "He was rather upset by any mention of his family."

Choosing to say part of the truth, rather than risk being caught out by too many untruths, Iroh said, "He's my nephew. My brother was unreasonable when they had a disagreement and threw him out." It just slipped out when he added, "The brand on his face is at the hand of his father. I just want to know my nephew is well."

Yen's look of suspicion crumpled into something sympathetic and he said, "I don't know much, just that he said something about heading towards the Eastern lands," he told Iroh. "He certainly was heading east when he left."

With directions to the correct road out of town, Iroh felt more hope than he had in months. He finally had a bearing on the last known direction Zuko had taken, so he started off down the road. As he always did, he left messages at every single outpost of the White Lotus, asking if anyone had seen anything of Zuko. It was months before he had any more luck.

That luck, in fact, did come from a White Lotus tearoom. The member there, while passing along the usual news the Grandmaster had to know, had also passed along that one of their more itinerant members, a travelling showman, had spent time with Zuko not too long ago. Iroh smiled in pride at the reports of Zuko's worth as a student of firebending and the strength of his control.

Iroh had set off for that town, hoping to pick up Zuko's trail, but was soon sidetracked by a report of the boy in another town, miles distant in a completely different direction. Then there was another and another. If half of his informants hadn't been White Lotus, Iroh would have suspected some sort of trickery. He still did, in fact, just not on the part of his direct information.

He had stopped one afternoon to enjoy a midafternoon tea break, and to contemplate a new angle of approach for his most elusive nephew, when the sound of badly played instruments reached his ears. "Hey there man!" shouted a man with longer hair and an odd red hat, in the lead of the small group, followed by a woman with a large flower dead centre in her hair and a few others, all dressed oddly.

"Good day to you," Iroh said, bowing a little.

The band, who turned out to be third-rate travelling minstrels of some kind, chatted happily with Iroh, pulling out a tea pot themselves to put on his fire. In no time at all, whatever it was that they had made tea from, put the group into an even more salutary mood.

"Man, that poor Lee," the woman who had been introduced as Lily commented. "That scar must've been such a bummer." She turned to Iroh. "We met this kid, waaaay tense," she said, "But really nice."

A younger girl piped up then, "He wasn't all that tense overnight," she said with a giggle. "After I shared some of my 'shrooms with him he got all relaxed." The way she smiled then wriggled a little left no doubt in Iroh's mind what Lee and the girl had been doing while Lee was 'all relaxed'.

He smiled noncommittally at the girl, and went back to sipping his tea, when something she said caught his attention. "That burn scar on his face felt really groovy when he rubbed my tummy with it."

"Lee would not happen to be a young man about fifteen years old, with a large burn across the left side of his face, over his eye?" Iroh asked. Zuko had been going by Lee, hadn't he?

Chong's head came up. "Yeah, man, awesome guy. After me and Lily took his advice and got married, everyone was so much nicer than before."

"Really?" Iroh asked, despite himself. What he really wanted was to interrogate these people about Zuko, but curiosity had always been one of his besetting sins, so he asked.

"Yeah," Chong told him with great seriousness. "I used to call Lily my chick-I-sleep-with-lots-and-no-one-else, but Lee pointed out that that was pretty much all marriage is, so we stopped off and got married." He grinned. "People are nicer about things now."

"I can imagine," Iroh said, a little more dryly than he'd intended. "Lee is my nephew, can you tell me how he is doing?"

"We saw him just a few days ago, he seemed pretty good," Lily said. "Really sad, though."

Chong added, "He's got a great relationship with that bison of his," he said.

Iroh blinked. "Bison?" he asked. _It couldn't be_ . . .

"Yeah," Chong said enthusiastically. "She's a big furry white thing, and she flies with her tail. Like a carp beaver, but in the air!" His arms flung out almost parodically to demonstrate. Then, continuing his demonstration, he scooped up his instrument, holding it behind his back as though to simulate a tail, and wiggled it up and down.

"She's so sweet!" exclaimed the girl. "Lily and I braided her fur and perfumed her and everything."

It could be. Somehow, Iroh's nephew had captured and trained one of the very few wild sky bisons left in the world. How he'd done it would have to be a mystery until Iroh was able to ask about how it happened, but it did explain the way in which Zuko was able to move without leaving a trail to pick up.

However, there was another item that interested him, and Iroh turned to the girl, asking, "Earlier you spoke of sharing mushrooms with him?"

The girl grinned and said, "He's really handsome. But he just so _tense_. So, when he wouldn't loosen up, I gave him some of my 'shrooms and he loosened right up." Her happy smiled turned a tad lascivious. "That time he let me kiss him, and after I put his hands on my-"

"Rather than go into the details of that event," Iroh said hastily, telling himself that the first opportunity he got he would give Zuko another talk about young women, "Was he fine otherwise? Well? Well-fed?"

"He's really fit," the girl said, and burst into giggles.

Chong shook his head. "But he's really stressed all the time," he said with some disapproval. "The whole time we hung out, he was all, 'Blah, blah, logic, blah, blah, reason. When I tried to tell him you don't have to have a reason for everything, he got really weird and kept saying that you really had to."

"That sounds like Lee," Iroh admitted. He loved his nephew, but the boy could sometimes be the most humourless person Iroh had ever known.

Eventually they separated and Iroh hastened to the next place Zuko had been bound. It was time to change his strategy for tracking his nephew.


	4. First Meetings

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: To everyone, thanks so much for not losing your tempers in impatience over the delays. I hope to return to this and anything else I'm in the middle of, now that the worst of the stress is over. You are not, sadly, getting anything particularly long to make up for the long absence, but you are getting a twofer in a way. Kimberly T had requested Shuga's reactions to meeting up with the Gaang for the first time at the Southern Temple, while Vaneria Potter wanted Aang's reaction. Hopefully I've done this some justice, although I'm not really sure of how Aang turned out. So, first is Shuga's take and then is Aang's take on that first meeting. Thanks again for your patience folks.

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><p>Shuga<p>

LeeZuko had had Shuga take him up to a funny place on top of a mountain. He said it was where airbenders used to live. Shuga liked all the open space so high up in the air and the bison fields and shelters were old, but had a lot of potential if someone cleaned them up.

Still, it was pretty lonely, and she really didn't think this was a good place for the human member of their little herd. So, while he wandered about aimlessly, Shuga considered whether or not she could get him to meet back up with the nice people with their funny noisemakers. After all, he'd gone and mated with one of them, so maybe she could convince him to make the arrangement more permanent. It would be good for him. Also, she could get her fur all brushed and braided. It felt really nice, especially since the flowery one, who they called Lily, had said it made Shuga look pretty.

That was when she spotted a male bison. He flew through the air and landed with a bunch of human calves, about the same age as her LeeZuko if she was any judge of the matter.

One of them, all in really bright oranges and yellows, bounded off, and Shuga squinted at him. Something was odd about that one . . . he had no head fur! But what was really attracting her attention was the male bison. He was so big! He was taller and had a wonderful wide tail and big strong shoulders. Most of the bisons back home were more slender, all whipcord tension. This one _looked_ strong.

She was barely aware that the short human with no head fur was saying something to the other humans about welcoming them to the Southern Air Temple, but this new bison was so much more interesting and handsome that she just couldn't care enough to pay attention to understanding the humans' speech.

Shuga edged her way into view and shyly greeted the other bison.

His eyes came up and went wide. His head bob and greeting were a little old-fashioned, but it struck her as really sweet. He told her his human name was Appa, and his herd name was Cloud Shaper. It was an old-fashioned sort of name too, but it fit him. She bobbed her head just as she would have to any other friendly face in the herd, something that she'd discovered humans did by baring their teeth in that odd 'smile', and told him her human name, and her herd name of Fleet Tail.

With great politeness, he bobbed his head and then rumbled to ask her permission to groom the back of her neck.

Now, it wasn't that LeeZuko was any slouch with his brushes and combs and everything else, but there were some things that were just best done by another bison's teeth. She was so eager to enjoy a nice grooming, that she plopped down at once, tilting her head encouragingly. A moment later, ecstasy. He was so good at grooming!

Shuga couldn't help but make encouraging sounds, and Appa happily joined her when she wriggled her middle pair of feet into position to scritch him along his front legs.

LeeZuko came running out, looking worried. Shuga hastily wriggled away from Appa, concerned about her human. But he just turned and started shouting at the human with no head fur. Shuga listened with half her attention, as she was really enjoying the grooming. But when the furless one started asking some silly questions about enclaves she pulled away to listen for a bit. When Cloud Shaper hesitantly inquired if she was through with his grooming, she decided to let LeeZuko fill her in later on what he thought was important.

That was when LeeZuko seemed to notice the bisons again. "Shuga!" he shouted at her, "If I have to leave you behind with another enclave herd because you're calving I'm not going to be happy with you!"

For a moment, Shuga thought about it. Then she made a decision. LeeZuko needed a herd, and these other humans seemed nice, _and_ they had a sky bison with them. A really handsome and tall sky bison. So she ignored him and pushed Cloud Shaper flat, happily grooming his back with her teeth. He groaned appreciatively.

LeeZuko was being stubborn, but she was stubborn too. She'd make him feel really guilty about taking her away from Cloud Shaper if he tried. In fact, a short while later, while the other humans had vanished into the temple, LeeZuko was sitting, looking just morose enough that she was really thinking about nudging him back to awareness.

It was only a short time later that first, the furless orange one came running back out, chased by the male in blue, and not long after that an explosion of wind a lot like BadMother's temper tantrums erupted. Deeply concerned that she'd misjudged something, Shuga hurried over, pushing against the wind, followed by Cloud Shaper.

Together they saw the female in blue push her way to furless orange one and talk to him, tell him her mother had died and that she and her brother would be his family. As the winds died down, Shuga asked the other bison if the furless one was alone. Like her LeeZuko. He was, and the two in blue had chosen to be his herd, like she'd decided to be LeeZuko's. With that she decided. Even if LeeZuko got stubborn chasing after things that weren't good for him, she needed to get him a herd, and what better than a herd with another bison and other humans willing to take him in?

She was going to interfere, pick him up and drag him after them, when LeeZuko did one of the smartest things he'd ever do. He asked, "Could Shuga and I come with you?"

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><p>Aang<p>

They'd just landed at the Southern Air Temple when Aang's first hopes that Katara and Sokka's insistence that there were no airbenders left appeared. He'd just welcomed the siblings to his home when a female bison poked her head out and rumbled a greeting to Appa. That alone was a good sign. Soon the pair were happily grooming each other, happily making noise about it, when suddenly he and the others were face-to-face with a boy in Earth Kingdom clothing, shouting at them.

"What in the name of all that's holy do you think you're doing!" he roared at Aang. "Dressed up as a Nomad? Painting tattoos all over yourself! Do you want to bring the Fire Nation down on the Water enclaves? I know the ones hiding with the Water Tribes have been more isolated, but that is no excuse sheer idiocy!"

"What?" Aang asked, entirely confused. "What are you-"

The stranger in green cut him off, snarling. "The people of air have remained hidden for this past century for a reason, and parading around and _showing off_ your heritage is a death sentence! I don't even know if my mother and sister are alive or dead because they had to leave before the Fire Nation discovered the enclave in Cheng-Dhu. So go home, change back into your normal clothes and don't drag your Tribe friends into our troubles, the Tribes have enough on their own as it is!"

On some level Aang knew his response wasn't the right one, but after being told over and over by his new friends that all the airbenders were dead, this was great news. "Katara! Sokka! Do you know what this means?"

Sokka replied sardonically, "We're on a mountain with a crazy guy who thinks there are airbenders at the South Pole and in the Fire Nation of all places?"

"It means," Aang corrected gleefully, "That airbenders survived." He grinned happily at the Earth boy, who backed away. Aang wondered why. Why would his smiling make the other one look like that? Like he thought that smiling was a bad thing? Eager for answers nonetheless, he asked, "What do you mean by enclaves? Are there a lot? Are you an airbender? Why isn't anyone else here?"

"Aang," Katara said, "Just because the airbenders survived doesn't mean they're anything like they were before. He was angry because you were showing you're an airbender. It means it's probably really dangerous to do that." Behind her he could see Sokka rolling his eyes, every inch of the Water boy indicating that that was the most obvious, and therefore obviously stupid thing he'd ever heard. The first one just looked flummoxed.

"Who _are_ you people?" the Earth boy asked the Water siblings. "What do you mean? You're talking like that kid's missed what happened over the last hundred years or something."

That was . . . actually pretty accurate. "Uh . . . I . . . uh, sort of did," Aang admitted.

"Aang," Sokka said, "Stop talking about it. We don't know who this guy is." He turned to the Earth guy. "No offense."

"None taken," he said. _Still_. "So . . ." he paused, and then said, "Aang, right?" Aang nodded. "You're _not_ from an enclave?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," Aang said, wondering what an enclave was.

"How . . ." The Earth boy started to say something, then noted the female bison sidling up to the male bison again. "Shuga!" he shouted at her, "If I have to leave you behind with another enclave herd because you're calving I'm not going to be happy with you!"

She grumbled and shuffled back a little. Then decided to ignore him and started grooming Appa anyways.

"So the other bison is your friend?" Aang was very eager to chat with someone else who had a bison friend like Appa. Katara and Sokka were nice, but this boy, whoever he was, would understand the connection between a boy and his bison better than the Water Tribe siblings ever could. And if he had a bison, that meant he was probably also an airbender. Earth clothing or no, things couldn't have changed that much.

Something about the question upset the other though. "Yes," he grated out.

Katara sighed. "Look. I know you don't know us and we don't know you, but maybe we can talk. I think Aang needs to know more about these enclaves you mentioned." She looked him up and down and then turned to Aang with a significant look on her face. "Aang? It's up to you what we tell him."

Aang agreed immediately. Obviously they had to tell him, how could he know to trust them if they weren't honest? And he seemed nice enough. Sokka rolled his eyes, threw his hands up in the air and told them, "Fine! And when it all blows up in our faces, I get to say 'I told you so.'"

Aang grinned a little at Katara, who smiled back, clearly agreeing that Sokka's paranoia was just the funniest thing, and then Katara said, "I'm Katara, Sokka's my brother and Aang . . . he's the avatar."

Their new acquaintance paused for a very long time before demanding rather abruptly, "How do you know that? Why should I believe you?"

"Sokka and I found him in an iceberg, by accident," Katara told him. "Just the day after he woke up, part of the ice shelf our village rests on cracked and broke off. Aang bended it back into place with water bending."

"His eyes and the tattoos were _glowing_," Sokka added, clearly figuring that once they were telling the story, it should be told right.

"Aang still hasn't learned waterbending, and since I'm the only waterbender left at the South Pole, I wanted to learn too. So we're going to the North Pole to find a teacher," Katara explained.

Then he asked one of the questions Aang had been afraid of being asked ever since he woke up to find the whole world had gone crazy. "What were you doing in an iceberg?"

"If it's so dangerous for an airbender to be running around outside one of those enclaves, why are you here?" countered Aang, hoping not to have to answer the question for a long time, maybe never. "And are you even an airbender? You don't look like an airbender, you look like a firebender."

The other sighed. "The short version is that I don't know where any other enclaves are. The Air Nomads, when they scattered, they hid among the other three nations. They had children with Earth, Water and Fire nation people. There aren't a lot of . . . well . . . pure air nomads left."

Before he went on with what was clearly a long story, Aang said, "I'm getting tired, let's sit down." As he wafted to the ground, he noticed the other staring at him as though he'd suddenly grown hair or lost his tattoos. "What?"

"I guess . . . I never really realised what it meant that none of the air masters survived the initial purges to teach anyone," said the boy. He slumped to the ground. "What you just did? Maybe anybody could have done that before, but now? My mother's one of the best-trained airbenders there is, and she could never just . . ." He waved a hand in the air, but the implications of what he'd just said left Aang shocked all over again. All the masters lost? None were left? Not . . . he hastily pushed away any thought of Gyatso. His mentor had to have been fine.

"But how do you train if you don't have anyone to teach you?" Katara asked. She sounded very eager, and Aang felt a small surge of guilt. He'd left, wound up in that iceberg, and thanks to his not being there, the world had gone mad and Katara didn't have any teachers. She was being taken away from everything she knew just to find them. And where he was now, he knew just how leaving behind everything familiar felt.

The response had been something about how the airbenders had adapted other styles to airbending, but in his moment of self-reflection Aang had missed it. Covering up for not paying attention, Aang said, "Huh," Aang said. "Can you show me? I mean, some of the stuff that was adapted."

The talk turned to the boy's family, and Aang was once again happy to have been raised in the way of airbenders, who never had to deal with getting along with people you'd never like, just because they were 'family'. Something about the way the boy held himself and spoke bespoke a deep hurt in him. That part of Aang, deep down, that made him think of things and do things that didn't always make sense but had a wisdom all their own had him skirting the issue and not pressing further. He let the other lead in the conversation because he needed to be handled gently.

When the topic came back to him, Aang decided to look further into the temple in the hopes of finding traces of where his friends and fellows had gone. "Aren't you coming?" Aang asked when the boy made no move to join them.

"No," he said. "I'll stay here with the bisons."

Aang let it go. Nothing would be gained by pushing, and that deeper part of himself whispered that something could well be lost. It had never steered him wrong when he listened to it, so he left the boy and went deeper in.

He'd almost forgotten that there was another airbender there after finding Gyatso's skeleton seated amidst the crowded bodies of the fallen Fire Nation soldiers. But when the boy, Lee, asked to join them, he said yes. The whispers at the back of his mind smiled in encouragement.


	5. Family

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: So, I've now been sick for the second time in two months and Mom's been in the hospital for a month, so I'm just trying to get myself back on track. The next request, which is very short, was from one Lady Dragon, who wanted to know about Sokka's perspective when Zuko calls himself part scum in Hei Bai's forest. So here, short though it may be, is the next chapter.

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><p>There was something wrong with Lee.<p>

It wasn't that he was sick or anything, it wasn't something hugely obvious either. But sometimes, if you caught him just right, Sokka's friend would say things that were just . . . wrong. And there was a part of Sokka that was scared by them. Not that he thought Lee would ever do anything _to_ any of them, but that there was something about the way Lee would say it that would remind Sokka of the time he had found Bato after the raid meant to kill Katara.

Bato had a twin brother who'd died in the fighting. They'd always acted just like the myths about twins being one mind in two bodies, and Sokka had found him, staring blankly and clutching a knife that was pointed towards him. The boy had taken it all in, panicked and run for his father, who'd finally snapped out of the depression of his wife's loss to get to Bato before he did anything irreparable.

Sometimes now, when Sokka looked at Lee, he could see traces of that blank look and worried at night they'd wake up to find Lee gone.

So, he made sure to befriend Lee, and was surprised to discover how amazing having a real friend that was a peer could be. All that stuff about girls that he couldn't talk to Katara or Aang about, he could talk to Lee about. He could talk about his love of meaty things and get a tolerant smile instead of demands he shut up. Lee was fun and funny and Sokka had finally come to understand the old line, "Friends are the family you choose."

There were times when he'd almost forget his fears of blank eyes and knives, and just enjoyed having a guy friend who he could talk about guy stuff with.

He wasn't thinking about any of that when Shuga and Appa landed in the destroyed forest. All he was thinking about was the way the Fire Nation soldiers had destroyed the swathe of trees and grass for no reason he could think of. "Fire Nation! Those evil savages make me sick! They have no respect for . . ."

Katara hushed him, pointing at Aang's slumped figure. "Why would anyone do this?" asked the young airbender. "How could I let this happen?"

"Aang, you didn't let this happen. It has nothing to do with you," Katara told him.

"She's right," Lee put in. "It's the Fire Nation at fault. If they weren't the scum they are, none of this would be happening."

Sokka frowned in confusion at his friend, the one who was part Fire Nation, maybe more than that if you considered what he'd said about the airbenders effectively hiding by vanishing into the populations of the other three nations. "I thought your dad was Fire Nation."

"He is," Lee snapped. "I try to forget that I'm part scum."

There it was again. Sokka could see it in his eyes. There was something inside his friend that was telling him he wasn't good enough, that he was, as he'd put it, 'scum'. All the Water tribesman could do was look at his friend, his mind whirling as he tried to find some way to talk sense into Lee. Because it wasn't that Lee hated what the Fire Nation was doing or felt that they were something different than what he was. Lee didn't think of himself as separate from the people of Fire, he thought of himself as one of them and he hated himself for it.

How do you convince someone that they're not terrible because of something so intrinsic to themselves? Lee couldn't stop being Fire Nation and he hated that part of himself the way that Sokka and Katara hated the Fire Nation for what it had done to their home and family. He hated himself in that faceless way that you hate the enemy, the way that you feel when you think about the implacable helmets and uniform marching towards you.

Lee hated himself as an abstract, and Sokka didn't know what to do or say about that. His mind scrambled, hoping he could find some way to shake his friend, make him see that he was more than the sum of his heritage and keep that blank self-hatred from creeping into his eyes, but there was nothing that wouldn't sound trite or easily dismissed.

Aang had ignored them both, missing the byplay of Lee's statement, and the conversation moved on. But Sokka swore to himself he'd watch and wait. He'd find a way to get through to Lee and make sure that he stopped seeing that blankness and feeling like the knife was too close to hand.

After all, family was everything and Lee, whether he knew it or not, was part of the family Sokka had chosen to make.


	6. Confession

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: At the request of Rebel Energy, here's the next PoV piece, which kind of follows up the last one. It's a nice confluence of events, I must admit. Even if it did take me forever to get on with it.

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><p>"Thanks. I mean, you could have told Katara about me, but you didn't."<p>

Lee was sometimes weird, but this was the first time he'd said something that just plain made no sense. Sokka tried to think of anything Lee had told him or done or something that he wouldn't want Katara to know about in such a serious and sincere way, and came up with nothing.

So, he asked. "Told her what?"

Unfortunately, Lee seemed to think Sokka was just being discreet as he just replied, "Thanks."

Utterly baffled, Sokka asked, "No, really, what? I have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't an I'm-saying-what-because-I'm-letting-you-know-I'll-pretend-I-didn't-see-anything-what. It's a 'What?' what."

For a moment, Lee looked a little confused and Sokka realised that he should maybe have put that another way, because it was kind of confusing, but his friend caught up, parsed the sentence, then snapped irritably, "What do you mean, what-what? My firebending."

Like Sokka somehow had figured out that his new best friend was a firebender from . . . nothing. Which was kinda dumb and explained a lot and didn't explain anything, because, "_What?_"

"I . . . thought . . . you'd seen me bend Jet into the tree," Lee told him, slowly. "And then you were saying 'what' and I guess I thought you'd figured it out. Before, I mean. So that you didn't think it was a big deal or something." He looked like he was going to cry as he glanced at Katara on Shuga's back and back again. "I'll . . ."

When he trailed off, Sokka had to ask, because this was huge. This was huge like finding Aang in a glacier or that airbenders were still around or that the spirit of winter solstice that delivered presents to good children wasn't real. But more than that, he had to know what Lee would do, because he had that empty knife-to-the-vein look again. "You'll what?"

Lee took in a shaking breath. "I'll take Shuga and go as soon as we land. I . . . Well, that doesn't matter. You wouldn't believe me anyhow."

_Wouldn't believe what?_ Sokka wanted to ask. He knew better. Cornering a wounded animal would just make it lash out, and if there was an animal more wounded than Lee, he'd be hard-pressed to find it. He asked a different question. "Lee, just . . . why didn't you say anything? Why all the pretending?"

Furious, Lee snarled, "Why? My mother really _is_ an airbender. I grew up having to pretend I was an airbender. I learned to fake it well enough that they just thought I was incompetent. I was 'Lee the crappy airbender' half the time." He glared at Sokka. "Would you have trusted a firebender? Would anyone? _I_ don't even trust me."

How do you go through the day unable to trust _yourself_? Sokka wanted to know. You know who you are and what you're thinking and what your motivations are, because you're you. But Lee thought of himself as somehow one of the unpredictable Other. The worst of the Fire Nation. He thought that he was like them, expected that he would react that way and feared it. The whole concept made Sokka's head hurt, but it also made something in his chest hurt to see his friend feel that way about himself. They were getting close to the dam, close to landing and close to Lee running off, possibly never to be seen again. Sokka looked for a way to end this conversation and stop Lee from doing something Sokka would regret. "Was your bending the only lie?"

Lee sighed, staring into the distance. "There's another one," he admitted. "But . . . I . . . that one changes _everything_. And I don't know if I'm ready to stop being Lee yet." He turned to Sokka. "But it doesn't really matter, because I'm-"

Why couldn't people and things just be what they seemed to be at first? Sokka wondered. Life was too complicated with everything not being what it was supposed to be. Little sisters being warrior-benders and icebergs being prisons for avatars and Lee being a firebender with more secrets than . . . something really secretive. "It has to do with why Shyu knew you, and you knew Zhao, doesn't it?"

Lee looked miserable and horrified and Sokka decided not to put his logic to the test and let things lie. Lee had done nothing to earn mistrust and everything to be trusted. The lies he was telling were all out of fear of how people would react to him. When Lee whispered, "Yes," Sokka knew his choice was made.

Sokka grabbed Lee's arm before he could get off the bison. "You're going to have to admit it to Aang and Katara eventually, you know," he said. "But I'll keep it quiet for now."

"What?" Lee gasped. He looked poleaxed. Like someone had smacked him in the back of the head with a whole unagi.

"You're our friend," Sokka said. "You've never done anything to indicate that we shouldn't trust you, and so far, all I've seen are secrets you were keeping because you were scared how we'd react." Lee continued to look like a mouthbreathing idiot in his shock. So Sokka poked him out of it. "Now come on," he said. "Let's see what needs doing for the dam."

He heard the conversation between Katara and Lee about pinching himself and smiled a little. Maybe there was a way to bring Lee around.

Now all that was left was getting his friend to tell Katara before she found out on her own and did something . . . Katara-y.


	7. Child of Fire

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This is a request from Lord Jace, I hope you all enjoy!

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><p>Faced with the fear of the volcano, Katara was able to admit to herself that she had been maybe a <em>tad<em> irrational about the whole fortune-telling thing. Sokka was right, after all, you couldn't live your whole life by the dictates of what some weird old woman in a small town claimed. More than that, you couldn't just sit there and wait for everything to go the way she'd said. The only way the world changed was by action. Anything else was relying on luck.

That said, right now they really were relying on luck. Luck that they'd gotten to start digging the trench to redirect the lava soon enough, luck that they had dug enough to move that lava where they wanted it, luck that the volcano wouldn't erupt before they were through and ready.

They ran out of luck. "Dig faster, dig faster!" shouted Sokka as the ground began to tremble and the roar of the volcano rose.

It was bare moments after that Katara heard Aang shout, "Everyone needs to evacuate! We'll come for you when it's safe!"

She saw the villagers scramble out of the trench, saw Lee take a run at the side, gracefully vaulting out of the way of the lava. As she watched, he stood close to the edge, and for a moment, as the terrible heat swept over them, his eyes fluttered closed and a look of peace came over his face. It was an oddly exultant look, and Katara wondered where she'd seen that look before. Certainly not on Lee's face.

Lee was usually morose, angry, brooding or incredibly goofy, that last one usually only being brought out by Sokka. But as he stood there, his face lit by the hellish glow of the molten rock, he looked serene and exhilarated, as though something in the heat was speaking to him. She was pulled away from her musings by the volcano's eruption. The lava was rising too fast. "It's too much! It's gonna overflow!" she shouted, turning to run with Sokka.

Aang started forward, clearly determined to do something, and Katara briefly braced herself for another feat that only the Avatar could perform. But it was only briefly, because Aang didn't have to do anything.

Standing just at the edge of the flow, Lee suddenly dipped into a form that bore some vague resemblance to the waterbending forms she'd been learning with Aang. His body swayed, moving not with the staccato movements she was used to seeing from him, but with a smooth, if awkward flow.

_And the lava obeyed._

Like some frightening parody of a waterbender, Lee turned the liquid rock away from the village, bending it the way Aang bended air or she bended water. Suddenly, he flung his head back, and from his mouth erupted a gout of flame, huge and terrifying. In that moment, he didn't look like Lee, her friend and sometime stuffed toy replacement. He looked alien and like something more akin to a dragon of legend than the brooding and sometimes silly teenaged boy she thought she knew.

As the flow eased and slowed enough to be handled by their ditch, he slowed and then stopped. Sagging, he looked . . . at peace. Katara realised where she had seen someone look like that before. It was the look on Aang's face when he flew or ran, his airbending speeding him on his way. The look on Haru's face when he stepped off the metal ship and came into contact with the land again. It was a look she'd found on her own face when she was floating on her back in the water, hearing nothing but the soft song of the waves in her ears.

But how had he done it? If he was an airbender, which now seemed unlikely, how had he moved the lava? There was no air in all that, nothing he could have grasped to do so. If he was an earthbender, why had he lied, and how? He was certainly no waterbender, which left only one thing. But how could Lee, sweet, kind, generous, silly, brooding Lee be a _firebender_? It made no sense.

Could Aang's capture in the iceberg have wreaked more havoc with the Avatar cycle than they knew? Had the Water and Earth avatars been born and died in such short succession that the cycle had reached Fire already?

But that couldn't be, because the Avatar was the reincarnation of all the previous lives of the Avatar. Aang couldn't have all the memories of the Avatar if Lee was . . . unless the spirits had created a new Avatar line, starting with Lee, because of how Aang had gone missing.

None of this made sense!

Then Aang spoke. "Lee?" he asked.

"Yes, Aang?" he replied.

Aang's eyes narrowed as he seemed to be looking through Lee for something. "You're not an airbender. Are you?"

"No, I'm not."

That bald statement shook Katara from her stupor. "What was that? How did you do that? That wasn't airbending and you were breathing fire! Only a firebender could do that. How did you manage to bend air _and_ fire and the lava? Aang's the Avatar! What-" The questions poured out of her, faster than he could have answered, but she couldn't stop, had to ask, had to demand an explanation for something that made no sense, that was turning the foundations of several things she believed in, on its head.

Sokka interrupted her as Lee suddenly wobbled, looking as though he was about to pitch into the lava flow. "Not now, Katara. Lee? Hang on, let's get you somewhere to lie down. That was some pretty powerful bending there."

_The man you're going to marry . . . I can see that he is a powerful bender_.

She shook her head. This was not the time to get caught up in a fortune that wouldn't come true for years yet, and anyhow, this was Lee. What was she thinking? She and Aang trailed after Lee, who was leaning heavily on Sokka, and Katara felt a stab of concern for him. He looked like he'd been dragged backwards through Gran-gran's washing and then wrung out after.

Lee was soon sprawled out on some cushions, gradually recovering his colour as he rested some. "So . . ." Sokka was saying as they followed the pair in. "Not quite how I would have recommended you let Aang and Katara know about the firebending thing, but you don't really have the best track record of picking good times."

"So that's how you did it," Aang said from the doorway. "You heated the air and put fire into it. You weren't _air_bending, you were bending fire _in_ the air." He came over, and floated himself into a seat on the floor. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Katara wanted to scream as Lee answered. On the one hand, this was Lee. Their friend and the person who'd helped them and rescued Aang from Zhao and saved her brother's life and was nice and kind and loved his family and . . . he was a _firebender_. Firebenders were evil incarnate. They'd taken her mother away, their war had taken her father away, their need to take over the world had taken her home away and they were still taking and taking and taking. And Lee was one of them.

"It's hard to explain-"

Katara cut him off because she needed to have answers, needed to understand, snapping. "You'd better try. We all trusted you, and you've been lying this whole time about being a firebender." Something occurred to her. "Why aren't you mad, Sokka?"

"Lee told me," he said, easily.

"And you didn't tell _us_?" Katara demanded incredulously. "And why _Sokka_?" she added plaintively. Lee was _her_ tiger-seal. Sokka was just stupid boy Sokka with his stupid stinky socks and his . . . why Sokka and not her? _Or Aang_, she added belatedly in her own mind.

"No, I used a fire kick on Jet when I was fighting him, and I thought Sokka had seen. So I acted like he already knew, and told him by accident," Lee explained. Which made her feel a little better. At least Sokka and Lee hadn't been running around plotting secrets behind her and Aang's backs.

"That still doesn't explain why _Sokka_ didn't tell us," she groused.

Sokka shot her a look. "Because he asked me to let him tell you on his own. If I'd known he'd put it off until he did something stupid, I'd've told you." She was about to start smacking Sokka for being dumb, because only a dumb person would have thought Lee was going to tell them anything like that.

Aang cut through the incipient fight, and asked, "Just . . . explain why you didn't just tell me you were a firebender to begin with," he said. "One of my best friends was a firebender." His expression got a little misty. "Kuzon and I, we got into so much trouble together."

"I didn't think you'd trust a firebender," Lee admitted. "I mean, no one trusts firebenders except other people from the Fire Nation."

"With good reason," Katara grumbled, and knew as she did it, it was the wrong thing to say. And she didn't need Sokka's stupid headshake and reproving frown to tell her that.

"Very good reason," Lee agreed. Sokka shot her another _look_, and this time Katara made a face, and nodded her understanding to shut up about that. "The Fire Nation wiped out most of my mother's people and drove them all into hiding. Even now, there's a general policy so that most airbenders are taught to believe that their own enclave is the only one left. There are a few people higher up in an enclave that know otherwise – my mother was one of them, which is how I know – but the airbenders now all live in isolated pockets across the other three nations. I can find the signs that there's an enclave nearby, but I don't actually know where any of them are." He sighed. "But that's not the point. The point is, the Fire Nation has done everything it can to harass and destroy the other nations. I'm ashamed to be my father's son."

"But when we knew you better-" Aang started.

Lee shook his head. "Look what just happened. Neither you or Katara trust me anymore. And it's all because I didn't tell you the truth. When was I supposed to tell you?"

"Right after you told me?" Sokka asked pointedly.

"I wasn't going to tell _you_ either!" Lee snapped, looking distraught. "I was going to let you all think I was an airbender so you'd all continue to trust me."

"Well, now we can't trust you at all, because you've been lying to us this whole time!" Katara shouted. Why she couldn't keep her temper, she didn't know. She just was so angry that he'd been lying for so long about something so important.

Lee paled, and stepped back. "If that's how you really feel, I should go," he said softly. "I know better than to stay where I'm not wanted."

Before she could take it back, make him understand that she did want him there, that Aang and Sokka wanted him there, he was gone. Shuga was gone and Appa was in a very bad mood by the time they were able to even think about looking for Lee.

"Katara!" Sokka shouted at her.

"I know!" she wailed. "I was just so angry and I wasn't thinking and I'm _sorry_!" She ruthlessly pushed the tears back. She'd just driven away a nice boy for no reason at all. Just because she'd had some hurt feelings from his being cautious. "I didn't think he'd _run away_!"

And when Sokka mentioned Bato and his knife, and how he'd been so worried about Lee, she felt even worse. All she wanted that night as she curled up in her cold sleeping bag, was to have her stuffed turtle seal to cuddle with. But the reason she needed one was the reason her replacement stuffed seal was gone. Which made it all the worse.


	8. Stupid

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: The last update on this, I actually missed that it had been requested by Ebonjadethorn, Kimberly T and EbonyWing as well. That was the last update. This has been requested by EbonyWing. It's really too short to make up for the length of time between updates, but there you go.

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><p>Stupid Lee had been missing for days. He'd stupidly run away taking his bison with him, leaving Appa unhappy and her stupid brother chastising her constantly and him not being there meant Aang had been all stupid about Bato and thinking she and Sokka would abandon him.<p>

So, everything that had gone wrong was his fault for being stupid and she missed him so much.

Now that he wasn't there, there was no one to laugh with her when her brother was being immature, because Aang was immature too and didn't see the problem. There was no one to think it was gross to go forever without bathing, which she knew Sokka would do, just because he always forgot. There was no one who'd let her be afraid without being condescending or making her feel guilty for it and she'd gotten used to having someone to snuggle with again, and it meant she got cold at night.

She was back to mothering Aang and her brother and not even having anyone to roll her eyes at when Sokka threw his pants in her face.

Being taken to meet an exiled Fire Nation general, one who might teach Aang firebending, had been a stroke of luck, since how many friendly firebenders were they going to meet? That is, now that she'd been horrible and awful and mean and driven away Lee.

That was why it was such a shock when, while she and Sokka lazed about, doing some maintenance while they had the downtime, to see Shuga come thundering out of the woods and practically tackle Appa. The female bison was crooning and snuggling into the bigger bison, who looked shocked, but pleased.

"Shuga?" Katara said hesitantly. It could be another bison that was just happy to see one of their own species.

No, that was Shuga. The female bison's head came up and she made a stampede of one up to Katara, licking her enthusiastically, then Sokka, who immediately made a face and started trying to get the spit off. Katara absently bent it away, wondering, if Shuga was there, then that meant Lee had to be . . .

"Bad bison," Lee said dryly as he emerged from the trees. He looked good. Oddly relaxed in a way that Katara had never seen. Like something inside of him had stopped hurting that he hadn't even known was there.

"Lee?" she asked, hardly believing he was there. He was there, and suddenly looking at her like he was frightened. 'Cause he was stupid. And Katara knew what to do with stupid, because she had a stupid brother. "Where have you been!" she shrieked as she slapped him. Maybe it would slap sense into his stupid, pretty, head. "We were worried sick about you!"

He put a hand to his cheek, staring at her now like she was crazy. Which just proved he was stupid, because obviously they'd been worried. "What?" he said.

"I was just trying to get an explanation out of you and you ran away!" She shouted. She started hitting him with each word. "Stupid jerk . . . idiot . . . what's wrong with you?"

"What?" he asked again. Stupid.

Sokka pulled her away. Which was just like him. She was trying to yell at Lee, did he have to interfere? "What Katara's trying to tell you is that no one was going to throw you out. How could we do that? You'd just saved a town by bending lava and almost passed out."

"What?"

"Is that all you're gonna say?"demanded Katara in exasperation. Why was he being stupid? He was normally less stupid than her stupid brother.

"I . . . I thought you were going to reject me," Lee explained, a hangdog expression on his face. "I wanted to leave before you actually said it. I didn't want to hear anyone else-"

"So you ran away before I had a chance to hear why you'd lied and maybe invite you along again anyhow?" Katara asked, wondering why she was surrounded by constant male weirdness. She needed a girl friend.

His good eyebrow rose. "I?" he asked her. Suddenly she realised how that sounded. As if she were Sokka with his silly insistence that he was the leader or something. Anyhow, didn't she get special consideration? Lee wasn't snuggling with Sokka or Aang after all. He was her tiger seal.

Sokka spoke while she quietly fumed over how stupid boys were. "Well, if you'd been paying attention, you might have noticed that Aang wasn't angry at all, just confused, and I already knew. Katara's the only one who might have said otherwise, and she would have been outvoted."

"Does that mean I can come with you again?" Lee asked. It was a stupid question, and Katara didn't bother answering it as she flung herself at Lee, hugging him in answer. He was as warm as he'd always been, still smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg with the faintest undertone of wood smoke, which was now totally explicable, since he was a firebender.

Sokka joined in, and Katara revelled in the fact that their little family was all together again, and for the moment, no one was being stupid. Then Sokka opened his mouth. "I have a feeling Shuga wouldn't let you go alone, and she has no intention of leaving Appa."

It was true, but that didn't make it less eyerollingly ridiculous when Lee left the group hug to scold Shuga. "Shuga! I told you! No calves right now!"

Just because he always got more ridiculous when he was in hysterics, and it was kind of funny, Katara prodded, "I bet bison calves are really cute."

"They are, and don't encourage her," Lee told her as he deliberately sat on top of Shuga because he was clearly trying to interfere in his bison's love life.

Sokka asked, "How exactly would you plan to stop her?" He shook his head reprovingly. "You can't sit up there forever."

"Watch me," Lee said. He sounded like he was six, not sixteen, and the pout made him just look so cute. He'd probably been a super-cute baby.

She climbed up beside him, having missed snuggles with him, taking advantage of the fact that she could pester him about being stupid and cuddle at the same time. "You're just so adorable when you get like this."

Then Lee was trying to peel her off, not very hard, and Sokka took it into his stupid head to tackle Lee, as though she and Lee were anything other than friends. So, Katara leaned on the closest thing she was going to get to a girlfriend, asking the bison, "Why are boys stupid?"

Later that evening, after Aang had returned and Lee was telling them about his adventures of being captured by Zhao and getting to Jeong Jeong's camp, she found out that he'd been hurt. Why he seemed so upset at the idea of her getting a chance to look at his injuries to be sure he was actually fine made no sense, but she just yanked his shirt up and then used the sash to tie him up so he couldn't get away.

The scar on his shoulder showed how deep the damage had been, a thick line of tissue that spoke of the pain he'd endured because someone from the Fire Nation was just that evil. She carefully ran her hands over it, watching for any telltale flinches or twitching that might indicate tenderness, tugging at his arms a little to see whether the movement had been affected.

There were no other marks there, none she could recognise from the few times she'd stumbled across him shirtless doing his morning meditation, and she finally let him wriggle out of his shirt.

As he came out of it, she found herself nose-to-nose with him, suddenly noting the way he was put together, feeling an odd flush over the way she'd just shamelessly run her hands all over his back like that.

She flushed and stumbled back, while he didn't even seem to notice anything, just grumbled about how she'd made him look stupid. Which was stupid, because she'd just been making sure for herself he was okay.

Why were boys so stupid?


	9. Change

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This was requested by Rebel Energy and newboy. So, after a continuing longish delay, a shortish update. Yes, the PoVs are a little confused, but that was deliberate.

. . .

Once I'd realised I'd otherwise probably have to do this three times.

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><p>Katara and Yue knelt beside Aang's body. There was a sense of absence there, something that couldn't merely be explained by the depth of his meditation. Aang's spirit, wherever it was, wasn't there. It was worrying, and all Katara could do was sit and hope to see him soon. They didn't have the time for Aang to spend days exploring the spirit world.<p>

The sound of screaming, muffled by the thick door into the sanctuary snapped her attention back to her surroundings, and she saw Yue's head lift up as well, watching the door with trepidation. Katara was already on her feet, preparing to defend Aang. The soldiers that poured through the doorway were hurt, bleeding and burnt, but they were better than the pathetic figure at their feet. Whoever he was, his face had been burned entirely away.

Following them in was Zhao, who gave the whimpering body at his feet a kick. Which was when Katara realised who it was.

"Lee!"

She wasn't thinking, was only reacting, and the water in the oasis reacted to her commands. Terrified, angry, past the point of fear for herself, Katara brought a maelstrom of ice and water down onto the heads of Zhao's soldiers. And at first she seemed to be winning.

It was the element of surprise. Once it wore off, they organised, and Katara may have been Pakku's most talented student, but she was only one warrior in the face of far too many. They regrouped and counterattacked, forcing her back by sheer weight of numbers, even as she struggled to reach Lee. "Katara!" Yue shouted from behind her. "Aang!"

She'd left Aang unguarded, and the moment of inattention from turning to check on him lost her the momentum she'd had, and they piled on. In the fighting someone got close enough to slam a gauntleted fist into her head, making her ears ring and the world spin. It wasn't enough to knock her out, but it left her disoriented, and when she came back to herself, she was flung to the ground next to Lee, surrounded by spears and firebenders, while two of Zhao's soldiers held Aang's empty body, the threat there, obvious.

And beside her Lee wasn't unconscious, just clearly lost in a miasma of pain from the burns. "Oh, Spirits, Lee," her voice cracked and she couldn't stop the sob escaping her throat. The burns on her hands sprang to mind, the pain she'd felt, and now Lee was suffering that pain, unrelieved, unstopped and she saw the way he was twitching and twisting with the agony, apparently unable to escape it. "You monster!" she shouted at Zhao, unable to believe anyone could do this to another person, then just stand there smirking while the pain went ignored.

"Ah, ah, ah, waterbender," he said with an amused grin. "You wouldn't want me to hurt your precious avatar, would you?"

He pulled a bag from his belt, then knelt beside the pool containing the physical forms of the spirits of the ocean and moon. "No," Katara moaned, struggling against the soldiers who had seen her about to try to stop him, and had grabbed her. He stood, holding the now dripping bag aloft.

"I am . . . a legend now! The Fire Nation will for generations tell stories about the great Zhao who darkened the moon! They will call me Zhao the Conqueror! Zhao the Moon Slayer! Zhao the Invincible!" He shouted.

Momo broke the moment as he always did. Chittering he started yanking on Zhao's beard and hair, shoving his feet into the man's face. The man nearly dropped the bag, but he regained his composure by trying to fry the lemur. At the same time, Sokka arrived. Clearly just returned from the front lines of the battle, he froze in the doorway, taking in the horrible tableau before him. His sister was being held by Fire Nation soldiers at spearpoint, a blackened and hurt body at her feet.

Lee at her feet. He could only tell by the clothes. Sokka's heart stuttered in his chest. Would this be the end? Would he have kept Lee alive, sane, their friend and comrade for this trip only for him to die like this at the hands of his fellow firebenders? His heart only started beating again when he saw Katara catch his eye and nod solemnly at him. Lee was alive for the time being. It wasn't much hope as he was grabbed in the moment of inattention and dragged to Yue's side. But it was something.

"Let the spirit go, Zhao!" Aang shouted. He'd woken, but he was still being held by the soldiers.

The madman shook his head, a terrifying grin on his face as he said, "It's my destiny . . . to destroy the Moon . . . and the Water Tribe." He held a knife to the dripping bag, and Katara couldn't speak for fear. To the side, she could see Sokka and Yue, frozen, uncertain. If they said the wrong thing, it would make him do it, but if they said nothing, he'd do it. And beside Katara, Lee was going into shock. Much longer and she'd have no chance at all to save his face.

Much longer and the shock and pain from it might kill him

Aang still tried. He had to. As the Avatar, it was his duty to try to resolve this peacefully. If he could only reach Zhao, he could make the man understand what he was doing. "Destroying the moon won't just hurt the Water Tribe. It will hurt everyone – including you," he pleaded. "Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world."

An old man, heavyset and Fire Nation stepped forward. "He is right, Zhao," the man told him urgently.

"Oh, why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?" Zhao said to the elder in insolent tones.

The soldiers had let Katara go, and she tuned out the argument. There was nothing she could do, but she could try to help Lee. Kneeling beside him, she struggled to force the water to do her bidding. The lighter burns, the ones where he hadn't taken the brunt were clearing, but the places where his skin had been reduced to charcoal, it wasn't helping. She clung to his hand, whispering to him to hold on, they'd find a way to fix this. Lee showed no sign he'd heard a thing.

"Let it go, now!" she heard. Her head came up and she saw the old man launch into a firebending strike that was as skilled and deadly as any she'd seen from Pakku. It was clear, though, even as Zhao fled the man's fury, that it was too late.

As they spoke, Yue telling them sadly of her owing the Moon Spirit her life, all Katara could think of was Aang out in the city, doing whatever he was doing in response to the death of the spirit, and Lee, at her feet, his face not merely scarred, but gone, and she could do nothing. Her bending was gone, that essence of who she was, torn from her and she couldn't help him.

Desperate and torn, Sokka couldn't help but plead with Yue, even as he saw Lee slipping away. How did he choose? A life for a city? A love for a brother? If he protected her, the way he'd promised her father, they'd both fail at their duty to keep the Northern Tribe free and safe from the Fire Nation. Duty warred with love on both sides of the argument.

And Yue took the decision away from him, in the end, because it wasn't his to make.

She wasn't paying attention to the conversation with Yue, because she'd grabbed Sokka's boomerang to chip ice off the wall and bring it back. Even if they could do nothing, she could at least ice his face, cool it somehow. Frantic, no supplies, nothing she could do, Katara could only think of pieces of what she knew of burns. You had to cool them, keep them from continuing to damage the flesh beneath with the lingering heat. If she kept it moist, that should help, right?

A small part of Aang, a part held by the ocean spirit, was in the Oasis. Because the water of the Oasis was part of the waters of the world that belonged to him, and he was aware of everything that went on in his domain. In that moment Aang was humbled. Because he was asked to give up living his life for himself, and he had fled. Faced with giving up her life itself for the good of the world, Yue didn't hesitate.

Aang swore to himself to never forget that moment of her sacrifice.

And then, like a miracle, power surged into Katara. She could feel the water again, the sacred waters of the oasis were right there, and she pulled them out, coating Lee's face with them, feeling the water move through the blackened areas of his face, down into the damaged tissue, to the places underneath, building up the broken blood vessels, the skin, everything, layer by later. The cartilage of his nose and ears, just as reduced by the fire regenerated.

Then suddenly it was done, and Katara felt herself released by the need which had driven her to fix the damage. She fell back, suddenly tired by the effort, and heard Sokka say from behind her in wondering tones, "What did you do?"

Because Lee's face wasn't what it had been before. The scar that had taken up nearly half of the handsome visage was gone. As if it had never been. Lee with the scar had been good looking. Without it, that face was flawless and gorgeous. "I don't . . ." Katara trailed off, vaguely aware that warriors had been summoned while she was preoccupied with healing to take away the unconscious Fire Nation soldiers and the old man who had helped them. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I think, maybe the oasis water did something. Helped."

"It could have," Aang's voice said from behind them. They both turned to look at him. "It's a sacred space. That grants it power that goes beyond what it might normally have."

"Aang!" the other person who'd had her worried was back and safe. Katara scrambled to her feet to pull him into a hug. "You're okay! I was worried!"

He hugged her back just as hard. "I'm fine, Katara. How is Lee?"

She let out a shaky breath as she went back to his side, ignoring the muttering of the various Water Tribesmen who felt offended at this interloper in their sacred space. "I don't know. I mean, I healed his face, but he hasn't woken up yet." But as she said this, his eyes slowly fluttered open. "Lee?" she asked hesitantly.

Lee frowned, then said slowly, as if testing himself, "Katara? What's going on?"

"Lee!" she didn't answer, too happy to answer, because he was alright. So she just hugged him in relief.

Sokka was there in an instant. "Lee!" he echoed. "Everybody! Lee's okay!"

Aang joined them, the three of them embracing him, their small family complete again. They'd all been changed in those moments, but for now, it was enough.


	10. Glow

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: The update today is in answer to a request by Kimberly T. The second half of this is me spinning this out because you've all been waiting for something, and you deserve more than the teensy little bit I've got here otherwise.

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><p>Aang, like the boy that he was had gone to talk to Lee, out of boy solidarity or something, to try and get sympathy for telling her she was so repulsive that he'd have to be desperate not to die in order to make himself kiss her. He was actually trying to make it sound like she was being unreasonable! All-wise Avatar, her butt.<p>

"So then he said he'd never want to kiss me, and when I asked what he meant by that, he told me he'd rather kiss me than die!" She put in before Aang walked away with making her sound like a shrew-toad.

Glaring, she was relieved that Lee at least wasn't going to think she was unreasonable as he slapped his forehead and said, "Oh, Aang. You didn't."

It seemed that boys spoke some other language that let Lee communicate to Aang that he had been dumb. While Aang was realising he'd been dumb, much to Katara's satisfaction, Lee turned to her. "Anyhow, that's crazy," he said. Then he sighed. "But since your brand of crazy seems to work more than not, let's get this over with."

That was the most insulting thing she'd ever –

Lee was kissing her.

Lee was kissing her and it was very nice.

Lee was kissing her and it was very nice and she shut her eyes and let him because it was getting nicer by the second. She buried her hands in his thick hair and felt his hands on her waist and it was _amazing._

When he pulled away, she felt disappointed. In the green light his face was given an even sharper relief by the shadows that only emphasised long eyelashes and perfect cheekbones. This wasn't a boy like Aang or Sokka or even Jet. She wasn't sure what it was, but –

"How does your brother stand that your brand of crazy manages to beat his common sense so much?"

For a moment she couldn't even believe Lee had said it. He had.

"Augh!" Katara shrieked, and threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Boys! Let's go!" she snarled and led the way out. Behind her, Aang and Lee were having a quiet argument about how Lee didn't want to kiss her either, and then Aang bounded after shouting about how he actually did want to kiss her, and Katara wanted to leave them both behind, lost in the caves so they'd have to kiss _each other_ to get out. That'd show them.

Stupid Lee giving her the deep down shivers Jet had, only a million times better. Why'd he have to be such a . . . such a . . . _boy!_

Sokka had his suspicions about Lee and his sister.

For one thing, they weren't as sneaky as they thought they were, creeping around and sharing a bedroll. Luckily for all concerned, Katara was too young to have any idea what that might mean, but Lee wasn't, and Sokka was going to keep a close eye on them. Hadn't Lee just confessed to having had wild weasel-bunny nights with that crazy minstrel-nomad woman's niece?

He might have similar designs on Katara.

However, Lee was his friend, almost a brother now, and had let his face get burned off protecting Aang and Katara, so that warranted some trust, even if he really was breaking the Guy Codes by trying to put the moves on his best friend's younger sister.

Now he'd kissed Katara, and Sokka resolved to keep a closer eye on them both. Still, he was reassured when Katara stamped around muttering about how Lee's very nature as a boy made him offensive to her, an opinion he hoped she'd continue to hold about all boys for the rest of her life.

Except for Sokka, of course.

Watching Katara out of the corner of his eye, though, Sokka saw Katara get a dazed and happy look on her face, sometimes glancing at Lee when she did.

Fortunately for all concerned, Lee still claimed he thought Katara was crazy in the bad way, and Sokka encouraged this impression as much as he dared.

After all, you don't bite the hand that cooks the meat for you, and he had to be careful or Katara would try to convince Lee to elope or something else crazy out of sheer Katara-y spite.

Aang remained blissfully unaware of it all. All-wise Avatar, his butt.


	11. Mommy Dearest

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: A very very late posting of another request of Kimberly T.

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><p>They had added another member to the little human herd, and Shuga rather liked her already. She had chosen to go with Shuga and LeeZuko, rather than Cloud Shaper, Aang, Katara and Sokka.<p>

When LeeZuko had them land, she was a little less sure, because the new one, Toph, didn't like flying. Who didn't like flying? Being able to see everything below and being completely free to go up or down, left or right, no trees or mountains or rivers or anything blocking your way, it was the most amazing thing in the world.

She was nosing around, finding some quite tasty berry bushes to eat, when LeeZuko and Toph interrupted their conversation to head off somewhere. Curious, since she had to actually really pay attention to know what humans were talking about and she'd missed it while eating her berry bushes, Shuga followed after.

They'd found another enclave. That was good. That was very good. She could introduce Cloud Shaper around . . . she'd have to defend her stake in Cloud Shaper. She didn't want some pretty other bison stealing away her Cloud Shaper. She'd had to be very attentive in the enclave in the ice and snow to keep all those hussies away from her mate.

LeeZuko, after the human door was opened, had asked her to wait there for him and Toph, and so she plopped down to do that.

He came back out a short time later, upset. "Mother's inside, Shuga," he told her, and wrapped his forelegs around her the way he did when he was looking for comfort. She rumbled at him, just the way her mother would when the human calves other than LeeZuko had poked and prodded her meanly. He held on tighter. Badmother deserved to have her tail stepped on and her ears nipped! Just when she'd thought LeeZuko was free of Badmother's badness, she had to come back like a batch of mouldy hay, contaminating everything around her for the worse.

_She'd_ deal with the problem, even if no one else did.

"We have to go back to where we landed and wait for the others. We've been invited to bring Aang into the enclave," LeeZuko said.

The moment she and LeeZuko caught up to Cloud Shaper, she started telling him _everything_. Especially the important part that Badmother needed to have her tail stepped on. Hard.

Cloud Shaper pointed out, a little doubtfully, that humans didn't have tails to be stepped on, but she didn't care. She'd find _something_ to step on.

They flew high, then up over the mountain and into a massive bowl and open space. The moment both their saddles were off, Shuga promptly started to try to bring Cloud Shaper around to her way of looking at things, ignoring LeeZuko, who was just jealous that she had a mate and he didn't, when Badmother appeared. "I see you still talk to that runt like she's your only friend," the woman said.

Cloud Shaper bristled. That human with her too-skinny body, silly head fur and perfume had no right to be insulting anyone, according to him, and she asked again if they couldn't find a tail to step on. When she swept off, Shuga's eyes narrowed and she left LeeZuko's human herd to tell him that Badmother was bad, and bad for him.

_She_ was going to _get_ Badmother.

Cloud Shaper followed, dubious about the whole thing. Shuga didn't care. Badmother could just keep her stupid human horribleness away from LeeZuko and his new herd! When Badmother started teaching her class, Shuga took up her usual post, so chosen because she could distract and upset Badmother just by staring at her. Badmother glared at her.

"I know you don't like me because my waste of a son saved your worthless hide," Badmother hissed at Shuga. "But you can just take yourself off. Go!" she aimed a whip of air at Shuga, who blocked it with a contemptuous swipe of her tail.

Then she turned around, pretending that she didn't have the control not to knock Badmother over with her tail.

Cloud Shaper just sighed and didn't try to stop her. Shuga found herself having to leave her harassing post to catch up to him, because from where she sat she could see bisons flirting with _her_ Cloud Shaper. That would not do. Reluctantly she left Badmother alone, reminding herself that LeeZuko had never liked it when she bothered Badmother anyhow.

Much later that evening, however, LeeZuko's herdmate, Sokka, came to see them. "Shuga, I'll bet you knew just how much of a bitch Lee . . . Zuko's mother is," he said.

She bobbed her head at him, and he heaved a sigh. "She pretty much just chewed him up and spit him out this evening. I mean, he tried to tell us she hadn't hurt him, pretending that the only kind of hurting there is, is when someone beats you, then admitted right after she'd knocked him around, anyhow." When she started growling, he scratched her. "Good bison," he said.

This herdmate was _definitely_ a keeper.

He went on, explaining to Cloud Shaper, her and the other bisons who'd come over out of curiosity. "I want you to make sure that Lee . . . Zuko's mom, Ursa, not only doesn't bug him while he's here, but that she doesn't get a moment's peace. How can having someone like that around be good for anyone?" he pointed out.

Shuga nodded eagerly. The other bisons were hesitant to listen to this non-herd stranger, but after Shuga told them all about how Badmother had acted in LeeZuko's last herd, how she'd deliberately hurt the herd, just because she was a bad person.

They all agreed never to help her unless a human specifically asked them, begged them, really. But Shuga was determined to make sure Badmother knew she was awful.

So, even though it pained her to see the other bisons flirting with _her_ Cloud Shaper, her Lifter was more important. So, every second of every day they were there, she followed Badmother about, growling. The best was in the morning, when the first sight Badmother saw was Shuga glaring at her. And when they left, Shuga _may_ have expressed her disapproval from the air.

Droppings from the air, as it were. That'd show her.


	12. Being Real

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: So, yes, I have been off in the lands of Primeval, writing all sorts of things there. I know I'm overdue for even thinking about this, let alone an update, but I offer you this, which is more on the topic of Ursa's revelation that Lee is actually Crown Prince Zuko. Sokka and Toph this time. Rebel Energy, newboy, a123b all requested either the gaang or Sokka's reaction to meeting Ursa, and Kimberly T, well, I don't think what I did with Toph here is exactly what you wanted when you asked for flashbacks, but . . . you got her PoV, anyhow.

Also, some of the italics may be messed up. This site's been cranky about my italicisation lately and it's rather irritating. I might miss something on posting recheck, so I apologise if something makes no sense due to lack of italics.

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><p>"I see you still talk to that runt like she's your only friend," said a female voice from behind them. Sokka and the others whipped around to see an arrogant-looking woman had come up behind them and was shooting Lee a rather scathing look.<p>

"And who are you?" Sokka demanded, guessing that this woman was probably one of the parts of Lee's past that made him hate himself.

"This is my mother, Lady Ursa," Lee said. Oh, how much that explained. "Mother, this is Master Waterbender Katara, her brother, a warrior of the Southern Water Tribes, Sokka, and the Avatar, Aang."

Katara was her usual silly, trusting self, and marched forward, hand outstretched all friendly-like. "It's nice to meet you," she said with a smile. "I'm glad to finally meet Lee's mother."

Sokka had to clamp down hard on his natural response when that woman sneered down her nose at his sister and replied, "A pleasure." Maybe being all snippy like that with fake smiles anyone could see through was acceptable in those fancy-pants upper classes that Lee and Toph were from, but in his book, acting that way was just asking for a quick smackdown.

One look at Lee, however, and Sokka knew that this was completely normal for this woman, more, that she probably treated Lee just the same. He opened his mouth to tell her off when Toph appeared with a woman in tow. "My name is Ling," she told them, with a bow aimed at Aang. "I have spoken to the elders of our enclave and they wish to speak with the Avatar and his companions."

"Then let's go," Sokka said, turning his back on Lee's mother. She huffed indignantly at being dismissed. For once, Katara understood Sokka's totally obvious facial gestures (she normally just squinted and asked if he was constipated – then suggested he stop having as much meat) and she took Lee's arm, steering him after Ling.

Once they were on the move and out of that woman's earshot, Sokka said, "Pleasant woman, your mother."

Lee protested and Sokka swore internally as he made excuses for that kind of behaviour. "She's had a hard life."

Toph might be an unpleasant girl who smelled funny and like hurting other people more than was warranted in a normal human being, but that sort of bluntness paid off for Sokka, in letting him not be the one to break it to Lee that, "Yeah. So hard she started off by telling you you're an incompetent moron right off."

Maybe he needed to talk to Shuga. Sure, a flying bison wasn't the best conversationalist, but they seemed pretty smart, and he might be able to pick up a clue or two about how to beat some sense into Lee's head about his own self-worth.

"She didn't mean it like that. She was just . . . concerned. I mean, she's always had to protect the Cheng Dhu enclave, so it's right that she's protective. She was just scolding me. I mean, there were only rumours about the Avatar, right?"

Katara's lips were pursed as she caught Sokka's eye. He nodded in answer to her silent question, _We _will_ do something, won't we?_

In one of his bursts of perceptivity, Aang saw the interchange, laid a hand on Katara's for a moment, nodding himself, and quirking an eyebrow at Sokka. Toph seemed to have noticed something as well, her eyes darting back and forth, unseeing as always, but the tilting of her head showing a reaction oddly like Aang's. She shook her head reprovingly at Lee when his eyes were focussed on Katara and Aang.

Lee wasn't stupid, though, and saw their exchanged looks. He flinched. "Lee," Sokka tried, reaching for his friend's shoulder.

The firebender pulled sharply away. "I'm fine," he snapped, clearly anything but, and hurting so obviously that it made Sokka's heart hurt the way it had when he'd caught his dad grieving for their mother.

They'd forgotten the adult presence with them, and Ling startled them all when she said, "I know she's your mother, Lee, but you shouldn't take everything she says to heart. She's not as important as she thinks she is."

Not that that had any effect either, Sokka thought, as he saw Lee's shoulders straighten and his stance firm up in response to the slight to his mother's honour. But Sokka also saw something else. Doubt. He was fairly certain this might have been the first time an adult had doubted the value of that woman's opinion in front of Lee, and it was giving the other boy something to think about.

Sokka left him to it, not wanting to push before Lee had a chance to absorb the novel concept that his mother sucked as a human being.

Between Toph harassing him, Katara bothering him and Aang bouncing off the ceiling, Sokka didn't even notice Lee had vanished until after he'd heard one of the elders say approvingly that Ursa had taken her son home with him. Sokka didn't even think as he dashed out the door and down the street to the house where Lee's mother lived.

Standing outside the door, he paused a moment, hearing a raised voice inside.

"No thanks to you. I still cannot believe you protected the monsters who destroyed our people."

"I-"

"I don't want to hear any excuses from you," interrupted the harpy. "Because you had to protect _firebenders_-"

"It was a nonbending unit!" Lee pleaded. "They were new recruits. Under eighteen, all of them."

She ignored him. "Thanks to _your_ need to protect the enemy, our enclave and Cheng Dhu were victim to a burnout."

That was low. Laying the blame on him because the Fire Lord was a jerk and killed his own people just to murder airbenders was beyond the pale. Sokka knocked on the door, just so that no one could say he hadn't, and walked in. "Where's Lee? I wanted him to stick with me," he said loudly. It was a small place, so it was the work of moments to find Lee, who looked like he'd seen a ghost, or just been accused of murdering people. Either or. He was pale and shocky. "Are you okay? You look as white as a sheet."

"He's fine," snapped Ursa.

"Come on," Sokka said, pulling Lee up. "Let's take you to see Katara."

"I . . . We shouldn't bother her," Lee said.

"Yes," Sokka told him in no uncertain terms. "We should."

He pulled his best friend into the street and away from that poisonous atmosphere. Bato and knives flashed through his mind again, and Sokka pressed his lips together, ignoring Lee's protests that he didn't need a healer.

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><p>Toph froze as she felt Sokka and Lee approaching Ling's house. Lee was leaning on Sokka, although he seemed to be trying not to, and his heart was beating fast. When the door opened she listened to his protests, but heard his unsteady breathing underneath. She'd heard breathing like that before. Often when her parents had locked her away under the pretext of 'protecting' her. When she'd been left alone for days and days with no one to talk to but a nurse, who wouldn't speak to her, just brusquely brush her hair and shove her into some uncomfortable clothing.<p>

It was the sounds you made when you were trying your hardest not to cry and not to be heard not-crying.

"_My parents, they just . . . sometimes it was like they just forgot I existed," she said, trying to distract herself from the disconcerting feeling of not knowing where she was or what was happening. "Sometimes . . . I felt like I wasn't even real, like-"_

"_Like there was something wrong with you, because they didn't want to see you," Lee finished. "Spirits, my father was awful, but he never pretended I didn't exist, just said to my face I was a disappointment." He sighed. "But my mother just . . . if it weren't for Shuga," Toph heard him move and felt a rumble through the leather underneath her and supposed he must have petted the animal they were riding on. "If it weren't for Shuga I don't know what I'd've done."_

"_That was part of why I ran away," Toph admitted. "There were the badger moles, and when I was good enough for the arena, no one there ever ignored me."_

_He wrapped his arms around her, and Toph shivered. It felt . . . good. So wonderful to hear the heartbeat in her ears and to feel him like that. It made her forget all the times she hadn't felt like a real girl, only a sort of flawed doll. "I still say that if it came down to it, Sparky, I'd marry you."_

_Lee gave a weak sort of chuckle. "You'd probably be better than most of the girls I'd be set up with," he admitted. "But I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister who didn't hate me."_

_Sister? She could deal with that. There was always time to get him to change his mind if she needed a decent husband. "It's a deal Sparky. Just don't think this means I'll go easy on you when we spar."_

"_Wouldn't dream of it," he said, laughing._

And he'd just come from his mother's. While Katara fussed and fluttered and Toph heard the sound of the girl's water clearly investigating Lee for her, she plonked down next to him. "What's wrong? Something happened, your heart's beating way too fast."

"His mother," Sokka ground out.

She leaned into him, squeezing his hand and murmuring in his ear, "You _are_ real, and you're worth it."

He steadied as Toph spoke, relaxing as Katara continued to touch him and chatter on at him. Sokka wasn't talking to Lee, but from the way he moved, he seemed angry and Toph would have bet a dozen champion belts that he was imagining giving that horrible woman a swift kick up the-

The door slammed open. "I expect my son to return at once," declared the bitch.

Katara was super-duper nice, sounded distracted, and that was the only reason Toph could think of that she wouldn't have noticed the way the bitch sounded. "As soon as I'm done checking him over," she said absently. "He's clammy and he's cooler to the touch than he ought to be, he's pale and Toph says his heartbeat is too fast. When I'm sure he'll be okay he can go back."

"Now," demanded Ursa. "He can fake illness as well in my home as he can here."

"Fake?" Katara asked. Toph felt the other girl's head come up and felt a sudden shift that meant aggression and anger. She nearly smiled, because sweetness sounded like she had some claws after all. Hopefully they'd get sharpened on the bitch.

"Yes, fake. I don't expect you realise this, but he is something of an inveterate liar," the woman had the gall to say. "Why, he sent me a letter declaring his father had scarred his face terribly. I could certainly believe it, given that firebenders are savages, but there isn't a mark on him." She sounded as false as Toph's mother did when faced with a social inferior. Like a poisoned sweetmeat.

Katara didn't fall for it. "He _had_ a scar. It covered the whole side of his face, disfigured his ear and affected his vision and his hearing. After Admiral Zhao _burned your son's face off_, I was granted the power by the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole to heal his face completely."

That was . . . horrible. And Sparky's dad was clearly even worse than he'd let on if he was burning his own son's face off. At least her parents had never beaten her.

"Oh," said the evil woman. She sounded surprised. "The scar was real?"

"Yes, it was real," Sokka ground out.

"What was he doing that got him into a fight with Zhao?" inquired the harpy. Toph could hear, the heartbeat the way the woman shifted, the undertones of her voice, she didn't care and thought it was something stupid.

Aang stood proudly and said, "Defending me while I was in the Spirit World trying to find a way to keep the Northern Water Tribe from being invaded." Apparently the Fancy Dancer still thought he could convince the woman by talking to her that she was wrong.

"Really," Ursa said contemplatively. She turned to Lee. "It's good to know that you're trying to overcome the bad blood from your father."

Sokka snapped. "Just because his father's a firebender and high up in the Fire Nation doesn't mean Lee's a bad person. It just means he has bad luck in a parent." Something about the statement put Lee's heart into overdrive. Toph felt his head turn, a soft gasp escaping him.

Lee pleaded, "Sokka, don't."

"High up?" his mother said. "You have no idea, do you?" she continued. "You have no idea who he really is."

"Mother," Lee pleaded. Toph wanted to hit the woman. Whatever she was going to say was being calculated to hurt her son, to hurt Lee. Toph knew one thing, she wasn't going to stand for it. Whatever the woman said, Toph wasn't going to lose her potential future husband to this. She wasn't going to let him be hurt because someone who should be nice to him was a terrible person.

"You've been taking advantage of these poor, foolish, naive children," the woman said, turning to the small band. "'Lee' is not who you think he is. 'Lee' is actually the Crown Prince, Zuko. The son of the Fire Lord, Ozai."

Lee – Zuko's heartbeat thundered in Toph's ears. His hands spastically moved, as though he was uncertain of what to do. Over it the earthbender could hear the woman, the Fire Lady's heartbeat. She was telling the truth, but lying by telling it. She was trying to tell people her son was evil by telling the truth about him. Which was worse than straight up lying. "She's telling the truth," Toph said. "I can feel her heartbeat and she's not lying." Then she let her anger colour her voice. "Not that I care, lady," she said to Ursa. "Sparky's a nice guy and I like him."

Zuko didn't believe them when they all started saying that. He didn't believe it when Ling, in a move Toph heartily approved of, tossed Ursa out of the house. He didn't really believe it when Sokka was so angry he had to go hit things and when Katara and Toph snuggled him.

That was okay, Toph decided. There was lots of time for them to make him believe it. In the meantime, she hung on to remind him that she was there and he was real.


	13. Rationalisation

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Hi, I'm back, and with two very very very short chapters as updates on this. This chapter, which is kind of an unspecified answer to a request by AnnaAza for some more from Ursa's perspective, is the last one I'm doing for this collection of scenes. It's short, yes, but I hope you'll nonetheless find it a bit interesting.

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><p>It had been a completely infuriating and maddening experience. The moment her son had arrived, the offensively self-centred attitudes of the Earth Kingdom enclave, their refusal to accept the depth of her sacrifices to the cause of protecting their people, had spiralled into an offensive and ridiculous series of derogatory attacks on her person.<p>

First, their accusations of prejudice against earthbenders were simply impossible for her to understand. Earthbenders were perfectly decent people, but everyone knew they were stubborn to the point of stupidity. That was a fact. Always running around, stomping on things like a child having a fit, no dignity – look at that Toph girl her son had taken to wasting his time with. Brash, uncouth, uncultured, probably some low-class peasant who'd learnt her second-class bending from a grunting monkey of a man.

And that bison of his! He'd clearly been spending time training that mindless beast to harass her in ways no ordinary bison would. She'd never dealt with a creature like that, determined to bother her and trail after her and express dislike, as though the thing had enough of a mind to have an opinion.

Ultimately, it was the waterbending girl who was the most shocking disappointment. She could forgive the Avatar for being blinded to the horror of what the Fire Nation was. Not only was he a child, and therefore incapable of any real depth of understanding, but he was from a time before the Fire Nation's attack, and obviously the gentle and kind nature of the airbenders ran true in him, making it nearly impossible for him to think ill of anyone. Obviously he saw her attempts at creating some sort of restraint and discipline in her eldest fire brat as being 'mean'.

The earthbending girl, well, she was an earthbender. The Water Tribes boy was a nonbender. There was no need for further explanation there.

But the Water girl, she had been victimised as so many had, she was one of the water tribes, the people closest to achieving the same native spirituality as the people of Air. How could she treat Zuko as though he were . . . normal? It wasn't that Ursa didn't understand the need. Spirits knew she wished he'd been a nonbender as she'd first thought, she could have let herself love him then.

Even now she sometimes had terrible nightmares of the day she'd found he was truly his father's son. Hearing those heartbreaking cries from her baby as he screamed for his mother rather than the cold, impersonal hands of the nurses. Years later and she still sometimes wished to hold him close and let him into her heart, but she knew better. A leopard seal couldn't change its spots, and a firebender couldn't change his base nature.

When she was informed that the education of the Air children had been taken away from her, she let the fury of the rejection drive her anger towards the Fire Nation and her mongrel son.


	14. Important Lessons

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: And this is chapter two of the two overly short updates, this one is a request by Kimberly T for Katara or Toph's PoV on the boys getting The Talk. Frankly, I usually prefer to leave the details of The Talk alone, so this was a bit of a concern for me, but I hope this at least meets some of what Kimberly was after. As ever, thanks for reading!

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><p>"What do you mean? Is there something we should know about girls?"<p>

Toph blinked as Aang asked that question, wondering if the airbender was really so innocent as to not know what the old man was talking about. It was clear from the increased heart rates and shuffling of Zuko and Sokka that they both knew, but Aang seemed completely unaware.

"Now that you mention it, young Aang, there are some aspects of your education that I worry may be lacking. If you would be so kind as to join my nephew and myself?" Toph shook her head as Zuko's uncle offered Aang the chance to hear about a whole bunch of stuff that, frankly, sounded pretty gross to her when she'd heard the maids talking about it at home and when her mother had sat her down to talk about the duties a wife had to her husband.

"Sure!" Aang said, and bounced to his feet.

The airbender really _didn't_ know. That was interesting. For someone so well-traveled, that was a bit of a surprise, actually.

"I'm not going through this with _Aang_ only," Zuko muttered to Sokka. "I'm taking you down with me." Toph pretended not to hear this, because it would prevent the joy of mocking Aang later if she gave away the game now.

"_What?_" Sokka hissed, but Zuko was already speaking. Toph turned with faked nonchalance towards Katara, pretending she couldn't totally hear the boys.

"Y'know, uncle," he said, very casually, "Sokka hasn't seen his father since he was fourteen, himself. Maybe there are a few gaps there. C'mon Sokka," Zuko spoke with all deliberate meanness, towing his friend after him. A snort from Katara caught the earthbender's attention.

Sokka struggled the whole way. "Why are you doing this to me?" he hissed.

"Because I'm going to have to sit through Aang getting The Talk. I'm not doing that without sharing out the horror," Zuko said.

"I hate you."

"Feel free, but if I have to hear this, so do you."

The boys and Zuko's uncle vanished around the bend in the canyon walls, and suddenly Katara was scrambling up the slope. "Come on!" she hissed to Toph. "Don't you want to see this?"

"You're going to listen to Iroh's lesson on sex?" Toph asked doubtfully.

Katara sighed, sounded like her mother did when one of the servants wasn't able to understand the right way to fold a sheet. "No. I'm going to watch my brother get hideously embarrassed so I can blackmail him about it later."

That was more like it. "Come on," Toph caught up riding a wave of earth, then caught Katara up on the wave, pleasantly surprised the other girl adapted so well to the motion, and they followed the whole way to where Iroh had seated himself on a rock and Aang had settled at the man's feet like he was a great teaching sifu.

"Now, young Avatar, there are some important things you must know of the ways of the world, and of men and women," began the man. "Do you know how it is that a child is conceived and born?" he asked.

"No," Aang said simply.

Toph snickered as Zuko and Sokka both whimpered.

Iroh shot them both reproving looks and began to explain. The scrunching of Aang's face, all the wriggling echoing up through the canyon floor, was hysterical. As Iroh explained the process of sex and the mechanics of how it all worked, the boy looked down at his crotch in disbelief, as though amazed his own body would do that, then back at Iroh. After a few minutes of hearing things she'd already learned just by listening to the guys at the Earth Rumble talking, Toph suddenly wondered, "Katara, is there some girl stuff that I need to know? I mean, I know about the badger mole going into the burrow and all that," she paused as Katara snorted briefly. "What?"

"Oh, it's just that Dad told Sokka it was the tiger seal and the breathing hole, but same thing," she said. "I was just remembering Sokka having the same face that Aang has now."

Considering the way all the blood had just swooshed right up to Aang's face in shock, Toph grinned. It _was_ funny. "Anyhow, I just wondered . . ." she trailed off, because girls weren't so different from boys, and Katara was pretty darned girly sometimes and might make more of the girliness than she should. But Toph didn't have a girl source other than Katara.

"Well, Gran-gran always told me that men don't think about some things because they don't have to deal with them." Katara told her. "The first is the times in your moon blood cycle that you're least likely and most likely to become pregnant."

Katara explained, calmly and without any of the silly flowery language Zuko's uncle was using, about a bunch of stuff, like making sure to clean everything up after, how to make sure the first time didn't hurt any more than it had to, things boys liked a girl to do that they didn't talk about because they were boys and didn't need to tell other guys that stuff . . . there was a lot, actually, and a lot of it had to do with how much easier it was for guys to enjoy things than girls.

It was interesting and informative, and the backdrop of Aang, Zuko and Sokka being humiliated made the whole thing pretty darned entertaining. Through it all, Zuko kept glancing suspiciously up at the cliffs where they were hidden, and Toph thought he probably knew they were both watching the whole thing.

"Wait a minute!" Aang's voice suddenly carried from below. "Is that what Appa was doing that time we went to the Eastern Temple? He was . . . was . . . making babies – calves with . . ."

Zuko was snapping as Aang trailed off, "Why do you think I'm always telling Shuga not to let Appa get her in calf?"

"I don't know!" Aang snapped back. "When the female bisons leave, we were told they headed for the bison cabbage fields-"

"Bison cabbage fields?" Sokka interrupted. "What's a bison cabbage field?"

Zuko answered. "Bison cabbage is a kind of really large cabbage that bison females are particularly partial to when they're in calf," he explained. "I think it's a little like pregnant women and pickles."

"Oh," Sokka said.

Sulking, Aang told them, "The way they said it, I thought the bison babies were grown _in_ the cabbage patches."

"Oh, Aang," Sokka groaned. "I stopped believing babies came from the beaver gull delivery service when I was seven."

What followed was a lengthy explanation of the process of birth, punctuated by Aang repeatedly declaring how gross it was. Katara and Toph slipped away, snickering, to wait for the boys to come back.

When Toph warned Katara the boys were arriving, the other girl nearly sprinted over to the fire, doing some arcane bit of waterbending, and within moments it looked like she'd been cooking jook the whole time the boys had been away. "How did you do that?" Toph asked, curious, as Katara stirred the pot. "I mean, make the jook in a few seconds?"

"It's all about infusing through the water," Katara explained. "And that's just waterbending, really. How else am I supposed to clean up and cook something vegetarian for Aang in the kind of time the boys leave me?" she asked.

Sokka, Zuko and Iroh rounded the corner, the boys ahead of the old man. Aang scurried past them, clearly bending himself to high speeds as he zipped up and onto Appa to hide.

"Your uncle's just . . . wow," Sokka was saying. "I mean, my Dad would never have talked about . . . y'know . . . technique and stuff." Then he hit Zuko. "And don't think about using it on my sister."

Zuko hit him back. "Uncle's always been like that, and stop hitting me. The combs were totally a brotherly gift. Uncle said it himself. Brothers give them to sisters. It's not a courting thing."

"What's wrong with Twinkletoes?" Toph asked.

Narrow-eyed, Zuko said to her, "Like you don't know. I know perfectly well you were _both_ listening in."

A squeak from somewhere around Appa's head confirmed Aang was listening. Toph decided she just had to respect Katara all the more when the other girl calculated everything she said to make Sokka have a conniption fit. This whole friends thing was a lot of trouble, but somehow, the fun made it all worth it.


	15. Helpful Hints

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from Kurama's Foxy Rose.

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><p>While it was a great thing that Lee – Zuko, she still had to correct herself – now had family that treated him like family, Katara hoped that Iroh's presence wouldn't always be as stressful as this. She shook her head as Zuko tried to shoo her off with the others.<p>

"You're pale, clammy and I can see your heartbeat from the fluttering vein in your neck. I'm staying here until you stop looking like you're going to pass out," she told him.

In a clear attempt to ignore her, he turned to Iroh, asking, "Uncle, there's no block for lightning, and when Azula hit you in that deserted village you didn't . . ." he stopped, as though looking for a way to finish the sentence that wouldn't make him have to recall that Iroh had nearly died. "You were just very badly hurt," he continued after a moment. "And just now, when I lost control, you . . . what did you do?"

"I redirected the lightning," Iroh told him with a smile. "I was unfortunately distracted when your sister attacked and I failed to complete the movement properly. It is a technique I developed from watching waterbenders."

"Really?" Katara said, interestedly. Clearly Zuko took more after his uncle than she'd thought. "Zuko redirected lava once by waterbending badly," she told the older man. It really had been _awful_ waterbending, now that she was looking back on it. Stiff, awkward, the movements succeeding more out of luck and will than good technique, he was lucky he hadn't sent the lava sloshing around.

Iroh turned back to his nephew. "That is most interesting, Prince Zuko."

Her firebending friend blushed. "Fire's just heat," he offered. "So I just . . . bent the fire in the rock."

Sokka kept saying that Zuko needed to be told he was good and good at things because of his horrible mother. "It was really impressive," she told Iroh. It had been. Of course he could have used some lessons, but really, it was impressive for a firebender raised on staccato movements in bending.

"And very clever to think of it," Iroh added.

Zuko just blushed more, and Katara was momentarily distracted by how it highlighted his cheekbones, whereas before it would have darkened the scar on his face distractingly. Amazing how very much of a difference it had made. When he asked, "So how _do_ you redirect lightning?" she was forced to shake herself out of contemplation of the topic.

His uncle stood, gesturing as he spoke, to match his words. "If you let the energy in your own body flow, the lightning will follow it. You must create a pathway from your fingertips up your arm to your shoulder and down into your stomach. The stomach is the source of energy in your body. It is called the sea of chi. Only in my case, it is more like a vast ocean." He grinned, sharing his joke with them. Katara smiled back, liking the way the elder was able to poke fun at himself in a way that reminded her of her own father. Zuko rolled his eyes, trying to pretend he was grumpy, but it was obviously a front, so Katara shot Iroh a sympathetic look. Zuko chose to be even grumpier in response.

"You direct it up again and out the other arm.," Iroh continued. "The stomach detour is critical. You must not let the lightning pass through your heart or the damage could be deadly. You may wish to try a physical motion to get a feel for the pathway's flow. Like this." Iroh stood, pointing up and to the left with both arms, then took his right arm, drawing it down, across his body, tracing the path he'd described, then extending that arm out in the opposite direction.

Zuko hopped to his feet and joined his uncle, imitating the gesture. It was the most laughably awkward thing she'd ever seen. It was even worse than the beginning classes at the Northern Water Tribe, mostly because those were children who didn't know better and were so cute it made up for the awkwardness. This was a grown man and an overly dignified teenager.

"I can't stand it!" she told them a moment later and hopped up to fix their technique. It was the work of a few moments to get Iroh moving properly, and she suddenly realised just how impertinent the whole moment was. As she turned to Zuko, because once she'd started this, she was determined to finish, she said to distract them all from her butting in, "You know, I've never really understood why other bending types don't replicate each other more. I saw Zuko doing his imitation of waterbending to manipulate the lava, so it's not like the techniques can't cross over."

"Well, I wouldn't want to be redirecting fire too much," Zuko said as she grabbed one arm at the wrist and pulled it through the path she wanted to follow. He finally figured out that moving the elbows and wrists was an ongoing movement, not a single motion that started and ended. Follow-through was so important.

"Why not?" she inquired.

Zuko sighed with relief as she stopped for the moment, already trying to figure out the best way to help him understand how fluid motions worked, and promptly sat back down. "Do you remember when I was redirecting the lava and I breathed fire?"

"Clever," his uncle commented.

"Yeah," she said. "I wondered why at the time. You didn't need to show off for anyone."

Zuko shook his head. "I wasn't showing off. Firebenders work with their own inner flames, unlike all the other elements that are working with things outside themselves. If we do too much with fire from the outside, our inner flame scorches us from the inside."

She felt her eyes go wide. Saw the moment again in her mind's eye, this time with the horrifying thought of what could have happened, how things could have gone differently if Zuko had been less clever. The burns she'd seen on him at the Northern oasis, only going from the inside out, the agony he could have gone through, would have gone through. "You were breathing fire because otherwise you'd burn to death?" she demanded. She felt almost retroactively panicked. As though now that she knew, it was possible it could still somehow happen. Or have happened.

"Yeah," he said, sounding as though it was nothing important, what he'd done.

It was _very important_. "You knew it could happen and you did it anyway?" she asked, clarifying for herself that he had been willing to risk his life that way.

"Yes," Zuko said, still so-casual about his brush with death. Sokka was right. He needed to be made to understand how amazing he was.

"Thank you," she told him, hugging him hard, trying to convey how amazing it was that he'd done that, how important he was to them, how much they'd miss him if he did something that stupid again and died that time.

He patted her on the back, muttering that it was okay, she'd've done the same thing. She ignored him, because she wasn't that stupid. He was that stupid because he didn't think he was important. She had to make him see that he was. "Katara," he murmured. "Uncle's getting romantic notions. Please stop."

She looked up to see a gleam in his uncle's eyes that put her in mind of a few of the older ladies at the Northern Tribe who'd tried to get her betrothed to their sons. It didn't escape her notice that she'd fobbed them off with a vague implication she was promised to Lee – Zuko. And with the thought that it wasn't even such a bad idea, she squeaked, backed away and ran off.

After all, she didn't want to give Zuko the impression that she _liked_ him. That would be totally humiliating, and it would prove Sokka right about his paranoia. And Sokka was her stupid brother who was never right about things like that. Even if Zuko was as handsome as a character in a romance scroll –

No! She was not going to get silly about a boy now, especially one she had to look in the eye for months and months to come.

Stupid Zuko with his stupid uncle and stupid pretty face making her blush for no good reason.


	16. Learning Curve

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from Elemental Baggage Claim. Also, an apology for posting Power Rangers fanfic of all things before getting back to this.

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><p>It had taken a long time to get to this point, and Iroh inwardly marvelled at the change that had been wrought in his nephew over the years of distance from the Fire Nation. The desperate need to prove himself had eased. While Zuko would always be a perfectionist, disappointed in himself for his imperfections, there was so much less anger and sadness in him and a realisation that being imperfect was not the same as being worthless.<p>

He owed these young people much for the lessons they had taught the young prince.

Now, however, was not the time to be lost in ruminations on such things. Zuko was ready to begin learning the purest expression of Fire. "Lightning is a pure expression of firebending, without aggression. It is not fuelled by rage or emotion the way other firebending is. Some call lightning the cold-blooded fire. It is precise and deadly, like Azula. To perform the technique requires peace of mind." He explained it as it had been explained to him. As he had expected, Zuko did not at first understand.

"Without aggression?" He asked sceptically. "Azula's nothing _but_ aggression," Zuko objected.

Iroh smiled, wryly. This was always the hardest part to explain, as those who used lightning most were often those with the least peace of mind. But there was a difference between unemotional gathering of power and an emotional purpose behind the gathering. "But the _emotion_ fuelling it is not aggressive. Azula feels nothing personal in those attacks. She is aggressive because it is her natural state. It has nothing to do with her personal feelings."

As though about to object, Zuko opened his mouth, then suddenly stopped. He leaned back, frowning. He seemed to be thinking, which was a good thing to Iroh's mind.

Iroh continued with his lecture. "There is energy all around us. The energy is both yin and yang; positive energy and negative energy."

"Like the Water Tribes' Ocean and Moon spirits?" Zuko asked. Iroh blinked, surprised. He hadn't thought Zuko would know to make that connection, to understand how the elements were intertwined in the way they formed the world. "The whole, 'push and pull' . . . philosophy?"

"Exactly," Iroh couldn't suppress his proud smile. "In waterbending the motion to take a blow converts that block into an offensive move and back again. They are one and the same motion, yet different parts of that motion achieve different purposes."

"Okay," Zuko nodded. His patience had grown far more than Iroh had ever expected from when he'd offered occasional lessons to the young prince as a child.

As always, when explaining advanced concepts Iroh paused, thinking carefully through how to explain. Different students required differing explanations in order to come to a proper understanding of how the creation of lightning was done. "Only a select few firebenders can separate these energies. This creates an imbalance. The energy wants to restore balance and in a moment the positive and negative energy come crashing back together. You provide release and guidance, creating lightning."

Slowly, very slowly, Iroh moved through the form, demonstrating the movements to create lightning. As slowly as the meditative bending forms of the Water Tribes, he moved through the stances and motions, well aware that the slightest mistranslation of the movements could be disastrous for them both. Fire was the most dangerous of the elements, and it was most important that the student learn the correct form the first time. Zuko watched him carefully, running through the form a few times to perfect the motions before he took a deep breath and said, "I think I'm ready."

This was the crux, as Iroh stepped back. This was the moment in which so many could lose control, could fail to create even the slightest spark, could succeed at nothing more than injury or death. Zuko stood a moment, his eyes closed, and Iroh again marvelled at the newfound maturity the boy had after his years away from the Fire Nation. The Zuko he had once known might have simply leapt to try, wearing himself out with increasing frustration as he repeated the movements without understanding the way they formed the bended element. Here and now, however, he centred himself and then began. Slowly he moved through the form, until the blue-white crackling energy formed at his fingertips.

Iroh smiled a moment, proud at Zuko's success, before he saw it. The moment when Zuko's pleasure at his first lightning dissipated his concentration and lost him his control over it. Still, he had been expecting such an event, and Iroh shifted into the movements that would send the lightning out into the sky where it could cause no harm.

He was no bit startled when Zuko flung himself across the clearing at him, shouting for Katara, patting him down in terror.

After several minutes of the boy being unable to listen to anyone's assurances that Iroh was fine, he was feeling the faintest stirrings of irritation, firmly suppressed.

That was when Zuko's sky bison began licking the boy. It was a strange sight, watching his nephew trying to dodge the giant tongue. A moment later the other bison was there, blocking Zuko while Katara gave him a cursory look-over before trying to reassure Zuko no injuries had been had. It wasn't until the lemur got involved, this after everyone else had, that Iroh saw his nephew calming down.

"You really feel okay?" he asked.

"Yes, Zuko," Iroh said, gently. "I am fine. I suppose I should not have been showing off like that so soon after my last injury from lightning."

He nonetheless resolved in future to find a way to dispel Zuko's apparent tendency to panic. It was most unconducive to learning firebending.


	17. Bathing, dressing, hairdressing

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from Lariren-Shadow.

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><p>Katara focussed with all her might on not being silly, on making sure Toph looked pretty and not thinking <em>things<em> about Zuko.

The second was easy. Toph needed a lot of work to get into fancy clothes, especially since you couldn't convince her for love or money to wear anything uncomfortable now that she didn't have to. And since she couldn't see how things looked, you couldn't show her how pretty a smidgen of discomfort would make her.

"What about this one?" she held out the dress to Toph for the girl to run her hands over the material.

Toph frowned consideringly. "Maybe . . ." she said doubtfully.

"Then let's try it on," Katara told her, "And we'll see if you like how it feels when it's on you. The colour will look good on you, too."

Much put-upon, Toph sighed and let Katara drape the thing over her. "Hmm . . ." Toph began twisting and wriggling and doing bending moves and Katara just let her. "No," Toph said suddenly, her arms outstretched and legs bent. "I can't finish the move."

With a sigh, Katara went looking again. Four dresses later she was starting to run out of options, unless . . . a hasty consultation with Iroh later and she was grinning. "I have the solution," she informed Toph, "And as soon as I've got something for myself we can go."

"Great," Toph told her, plopping down to wait.

Finding something for herself turned out to be more of a challenge than she thought, because Iroh had some very distinct ideas about what Katara should and should not be wearing. It was only after Toph offered to blast the man through the ceiling that Katara took a deep breath and let him talk her around.

The bulk of the day she spent doing two things. One, getting Toph to have a bath, which was so much harder than it ought to have been it wasn't even funny, and two, taking the top half of one dress and combining it with the bottom half of another for one whole dress that Toph would wear. In the meanwhile, she picked apart the stitchwork, laying aside the thread from it all for later use, the silken panels of the dress for reuse in something else or to trade for cash, adapting slippers for Toph that had no soles but looked normal so that the other girl wouldn't stand out, but would be nonetheless comfortable.

But it was a fun challenge and meant that Katara could focus on that and not on the way Zuko was looking at her or too much on her own clothes or wondering if General Iroh was right that Zuko was thinking _things_ about her.

He wasn't, of course. That was silly.

That was why she had the courage to ask when she saw him banging his head on the vanity in frustration, "You need any help?"

He turned around, and Katara was struck all over again by how _well_ he wore fancy nobility-style clothes. She'd seen that once before when they were at Toph's and the Bei Fongs had given him those robes to wear after Sokka had covered his regular clothes in spat-out food. She'd been saved that time by Sokka giving her the perfect line to make fun of him so she had time to recover from the fact that Zuko looked and acted like a prince. After all, it was one thing in the dusty travel clothes, totally another with silk and embroidery and flowy things.

Suddenly she realised she'd been standing around like an idiot staring at him, and he probably thought there was something wrong with her. And then he bowed all courtly and stuff and said, "I would be most pleased, my lady," transporting Katara into a world where she was a princess and it was a ball to meet a foreign prince and they were going to dance all night . . .

_Get a grip!_

"I . . . uh . . . you were banging your head on the table," she said, "So I thought you might be having trouble with something." Sounding stupid had the added advantage of making him let go of her hand and turn back into Lee – Zuko. Which was good, because she was less likely to act stupid.

"Please. Can you fix my hair?" he pleaded. "Before I have to embarrass myself and ask Uncle?"

"Sit down," she said. He did as he was told and she brushed out his hair. Sternly telling herself every time her fingers tried to linger in the thick locks that he wanted her help with his hair, not to be petted like a bear dog. Soon enough she had it back in imitation of the styles she'd seen some Earth noblemen wearing.

"How sweet! I recall when my wife used to do that for me," his uncle said from the door. Zuko tried to bang his head on the vanity again, and Katara grabbed the back of his tunic pulling sharply so that any movement forward choked him.

"You mess up the hair and I'm not helping you fix it," she told him. Because seriously, if she had to keep making herself nuts, she'd have to make him fend for himself. "He's teasing you. Deal with it."

"He's not teasing," Zuko groused as he followed her and his uncle down the stairs. "He's completely serious. That's the problem."

Katara decided that Zuko was being oversensitive, because it was ridiculous to think that Zuko would ever think of her like that. With that resolution in mind she tuned out Toph and Iroh's conversation about Zuko being Toph's Potential Future Husband.


	18. Potential in Future

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: First, thank Wikipedia for the probable misuse of the word 'yosei' as a shorthand for something like fairies, specifically. That is, I was looking for a Japanese term that denoted something sweet and nice and not-scary from folklore. This request comes from Kimberly T and Belle Sparrow both.

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><p>Iroh knew his nephew thought him interfering, and perhaps he was, but Zuko was not a subtle person. It would not do to simply hint or gently nudge young Katara and Zuko into each other's spheres. Zuko was as likely as not to convince himself he bore no affection to the lovely waterbender, and she could no doubt read Zuko's false certainty on the topic, even if her native lack of guile meant she couldn't see through his self-deception. It all meant that Iroh felt he simply had to mention repeatedly that the pair were clearly attracted to one another lest they convince themselves it was all nothing and let the opportunity pass.<p>

Having done his duty to nudge at them again with the implications behind his comments on his wife's habits, Iroh followed the pair down the stairs.

Toph was waiting at the bottom of the stairs looking polished, but with a sort of ruffled air to her. "You look pretty," Zuko offered. "I'd better," Toph groused. "Katara made me take a _bath_." Having heard only a portion of the girl's tale, Iroh did wonder at that, since Toph's reticence over a bath was rather strange given the upbringing she must have had.

"Sometime I have to take you to a hot spring," Zuko told her. "You'd love it. It's all rocky, and the water's heated by underground lava flows." His nephew would make a wonderful negotiator someday.

"If you can find me a bath that includes rocks and lava, I'm willing to give it a shot," she told him, agreeably. "I look okay? Katara didn't do that thing where you make your friends look ugly to make yourself look better?"

"No," Zuko told her. "And I don't think Katara would anyway. Not unless something happened and she suddenly became deranged."

"Hmmph," Toph told him. "That's good. Still, she'd better not be poaching my potential future husband."

Iroh choked on nothing. Just _what_ was the earthbender up to? An undertone to Toph's voice spoke of something other than the sisterly affection he'd seen up to that point. Zuko caught his sudden coughing fit and turned, looking concerned. "Uncle?" he asked, "Are you okay?"

"Just fine," he said, clearing his throat. "To what, exactly, are you referring, young Toph?"

The girl shot him a sharp look, reminding Iroh that her unusual perceptivity as to a person's truth or falsehood would no doubt extend to manipulation. Nonetheless, she answered. "When the others all showed up and my parents' house looking for me because Aang had some sort of weird vision or something, Dad picked up pretty quick that Zuko's not a commoner." They were now climbing into the carriage, and Iroh internally rolled his eyes as both Zuko and Katara promptly turned away from everyone else, staring fixedly out their respective windows with an intensity that suggested they were trying to ignore their surroundings.

"And what came of this recognition?" he asked.

The look Toph sent him was sardonic. "What do you think?" she asked. "They tried to barter me off. I'll admit, the deal would have been a good one for them, even if Sparky was just lower end nobility. The Bei Fongs are merchants, for all we've got money and influence."

It should have been obvious, and Iroh blamed his long time in the world outside the machinations of the upper classes for having missed it. Not to mention that, once he had come into his own and married, those particular manipulations had ceased to be a concern for him and were not something he had had need to monitor. Still, it _was_ obvious given the caste Toph was from, and Iroh looked at her in consideration. "Are you interested in my nephew in such a fashion?" he asked. The girl was young, but not so young that her romantic interests hadn't begun to move past tales of princes and yosei.

She frowned a little. "I don't know that I want to bother making a big deal out of finding someone I think of that way when I _know_ I like Sparky and . . ." she flushed a little as she trailed off.

This was interesting. "You would prefer the certainty of his friendship at such time as you must marry?"

Defiantly, Toph said, "What's wrong with that? Plenty of girls don't get to land a nice guy when they're married off. They just get some old man who wants lots of kids and looks pretty at the head of the table. At least Sparky's nice, and fun and I like," she paused, glanced at Katara, and that seemed to firm her resolve. "And he feels nice when I tackle him," she said with the near-crass bluntness that so made her who she was.

So, she was, perhaps more aware of his nephew's charms than she normally let on. "You are not now with your parents, indeed," he added, "You have no intention of returning to them, perhaps you should think on acting without reference to their choices, socially."

He was grateful for the way the carriage would block her normal perceptivity. He did not believe in the way she had left her home, thought she might do well to attempt to regain at least some of her contact and relationship with her parents, but could not say such a thing. Not yet. And in the meanwhile, he did not want Zuko looking to a match for pragmatism when he could match so well with Katara, and it would do Toph a disservice to wither away mistaking sisterly affection and lust for true love. But all this was complex and Toph would sense his reticence, while not understanding the layers to his objections. Which would lead her to thinking he was lying. Which he was not. Just . . . advocating a view that served his interests in the short term.

"You make a good point, Pops," she said, clearly thinking on what he was saying. Then she shot him a suspicious look. "But you coulda just said you're too busy setting Sugar Queen up with Sparky and you don't want me messing that up by reminding him he agreed to be my potential future husband."

"Toph," Iroh said, shaking his head in amusement, "Remind me to find a way to teach you to play Pai sho."


	19. Pretty

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from AnnaAza.

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><p>Katara felt jittery the whole ride back to the house. It took everything in her to wait until Sokka was snoring, clearly trying to defend them all from malevolent spirits through the sounds coming out of his wide open mouth. Zuko had left his door open and Katara didn't even bother thinking about what it meant, because she wanted her tiger seal. He shook his head as she shoved him over and burrowed into him. "How does Sokka not wake himself up?" he asked her, as he let her snuggle. He was warm and nice-smelling and snuggly and feeling his arms wrap around her made the horrible shivery feeling start to go away.<p>

"Sometimes he does," Katara told him, her voice muffled by his sternum.

"Are you okay?"

She sighed, gustily. "I don't know. I just . . . Long Feng scared me, and Joo Dee . . . I don't even . . ." She trailed off, not knowing what to say, how to explain to him how she felt. She was scared and it was scary. Really scary. But it was a different sort of scary from the Fire Nation, from being in combat, from giant unagi and platypus bears, different from being alone because she was the last waterbender or anything else scary she'd dealt with.

"I know," Zuko murmured. "What did they do to the first one, and why?"

"She was supposed to keep us quiet," Katara said. "She wasn't doing her job, so they . . . they did _something_ bad to her." But they didn't know what, and the not-knowing was more frightening,

Zuko shivered a little, making Katara feel both better that he was equally unsettled because it meant she wasn't a wimp, and worse, because Zuko was so rarely upset that openly. "We'll figure something out," he told her. "We have to," he added, a little bleakly.

"We _will_," she assured him, then kissed his cheek.

Zuko blinked at her. "What was that for?"

"For being so nice all evening, for explaining all the weird court stuff, for not making me feel dumb for not figuring that out on my own," she paused and reburied her head in his chest because she couldn't look him in the eye saying things like that. "And for being all courtly and stuff when I showed up to do your hair. It made me feel like a princess and stuff."

"Made you what?" Zuko asked. "I didn't hear that."

Seriously? Did he have some sort of training in ruining the moment? "It made me feel like a princess or something, okay? Like I was special." Then, because it was the most embarrassing thing ever, she started to scramble out of the bed, because she couldn't snuggle with Zuko when he was going to laugh at her.

He grabbed her hand and yanked her back. "What do you mean?" he asked. "That's not even the correct form for addressing a princess."

That. Jerk. He was going to keep her there just to point out how much not-a-princess she was. "Fine. Make fun of me."

"I'm not," he said. He sounded actually confused, and Katara turned around, examining him for hints of duplicity of any kind. He just kept looking confused. After a minute of carefully examining him in the moonlight coming in the window, she decided to trust his honesty. He wasn't Toph or Sokka, after all. "You'd better not be," she told him grumpily. She was going out on a limb, here.

"I still have no idea what you mean," Zuko told her. "I was just . . . you . . ." Something about the dark made him honest. "You looked really pretty. Like you were a real noblewoman. You wear it well, you know," he told her. "I just . . . it was like instinct, okay?"

"Oh," she said in a small voice. A moment later, what he'd actually said got through to her. "You thought I looked pretty? Like a noblewoman pretty?" _Like the pretty girls you know in the Fire Nation with their expensive clothes and paints and perfumes? Like someone who doesn't have calloused hands from hard labour and chapped skin all over from Antarctic winters?_

"You always look pretty," Zuko said. For some really weird reason he sounded annoyed. "You don't look any less pretty than noblewomen do, you just dress differently." He sat up enough so that he could glare down at her. "Can we stop this so at least _I_ can get some sleep?"

"You think I always look pretty?" The question slipped out before she could help herself. They'd had a long and stressful day, she should have just been going to sleep, now that she was warm and comfy with her firebender and tiger seal all in one, but . . . pretty wasn't something she heard a lot about from people talking about her. Awesome bender, good student, smart, hardworking and she wasn't even going to think about Sokka, because the idea of her brother ever thinking of her as anything but his bratty little sister and pants-mender was pretty much just crazy.

"One, I thought we went over this back at the Northern Temple. Yes, you're pretty. Two, I'm going to make you go away if you don't start with being quiet so I can sleep," Zuko told her.

She settled back down.

When she muttered, "You think I'm pretty," he just sighed and patted her back.

A _prince_ thought _she_ was _pretty_.


	20. Anchor

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from Lariren-Shadow. Yes, I know I've been gone forever. I nonetheless offer you all this tiny update. Hope you enjoy!

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><p>The look on Azula's face made Mai wonder what the princess was up to now. For all that she appreciated Azula's less-than-dull nature, the fact was that she knew perfectly well there was something deeply wrong with the other girl at the core of her. Still, there were a lot of reasons to avoid upsetting the princess, not least of which had to do with Azula's new, odd, obsession with Zuko. And Mai had been . . . interested in Prince Zuko for years. He tended to be a little pedantic, yes, but he was clever and usually caught on to Mai's sense of humour, which made him so much better than the idiots who didn't understand how sarcasm worked unless you stood there mugging like an idiot. Like those idiots, in fact.<p>

"So, now that we have Zuzu here," Azula began, "I've contacted the Dai Li and they've begun to do their little mindbending trick on him."

She'd heard about that by now. It was so central to so much of the earthbenders' plotting you could hardly miss it once you were behind the scenes. "And what do you intend to make him think?" she asked, cautiously sounding as if she couldn't care less. But she could. Because there was the tiniest hint of fear in her that the princess would take away everything that had made Zuko who he was. The kindness that he'd always had for Mai and Ty Lee, his desire to see the good in people rather than the bad, the way he so strongly clung to his honour in a way that made him different than the posturing idiots who saw honour as something other people dictated for you.

"Oh, this and that," Azula told her carelessly. "That he's never left home, that father took the throne away from him and handed it to me, that he owes me for this chance to prove to the Fire Lord how much he is his son."

The glittering golden eyes in front of her made Mai nervous. She clamped down hard on the feeling. She'd heard some peasant say once, 'Never let them see you sweat,' and wholeheartedly agreed with the statement. With every bit of control she maintained the emotionless mien she was so well-known for. "What do Ty Lee and I need to know? And why aren't you telling her right now as well?"

"Well," Azula said, drawing the word out with relish. "The reason I'm telling you separately from Ty Lee is partly because I thought I should give you some time to be ready for his being all . . . _in wuv_ with you," the smirk on her face made the concept of love seem almost lewd. "Why, you've just been all stiff and you haven't said a single sarcastic comment to me this whole time," added the princess.

Damn her. And damn herself for falling into that trap. But there was almost nothing here she could be wry or ironic or sarcastic about. "Cute. Because I have such an inclination to doing handsprings through fields of poppies in raptures over my nonexistent boyfriend," Mai essayed.

She locked eyes with Azula a moment, daring her . . . friend to continue the line of thought. The princess seemed to decide the effort wasn't worth it right then. "The Dai Li indicated that, given that Zuzu's going to be running into his former 'buddies', the Avatar and the rest, not to mention that he really _hasn't_ been home in years, he's going to need something that will reinforce their work."

"Or what?" Mai asked, interested in spite of herself. This was why she stayed with Azula. Governance was all very well, but this was clever and different and forced you to think and plot and plan and made the noblewoman almost smile.

"Or he'll start to remember everything and be confused and useless," Azula informed her.

The thought of Zuko, angry and confused, running rampant in the palace and possibly giving a few of those idiots the beatings they so richly deserved piqued Mai's interest. "Could be amusing," she said with a quirk of the lips.

"Maybe so, but it wouldn't help my plans in the least," Azula said sharply. "He needs an anchor point. Someone to go to whose presence will reinforce what he's been told. In effect, when he gets close to that person and the positive relationship with them is emphasised he'll feel better. The more he resists what he's been told to believe the sicker he'll feel. Carrot and stick, you know." She looked steadily at Mai with a smirk. "That's going to be you."

Being a lynchpin in one of Azula's plans was a dangerous thing to be. "Any particular reason why me and not you?"

"Because he has to want to spend time with you. His _girlfriend_," Azula leered the last two words.

Mai eyed her with suspicion masked as distaste. "You want me to pretend to be his girlfriend?" she asked. "He's going to be even more dull than usual, insisting on something he thinks is romance. Which is going to be trite and boring," she pointed out. Well, it was true. Zuko was many things, but a creative sort of person who understood how to bring romance to a situation without repeating the clichés of the centuries? That was not his strong point.

"I'm sure you can think of something less boring," Azula told her. "After all, part of the reason you're supposed to be his anchor is because you'll make him feel _good_." She smirked, but there was something in her face that worried Mai. Something that looked more . . . more _Azula_ than Azula usually did.

She responded as dryly as she could, "There's something to look forward to, making _Zuko_ feel good. My life is now complete." Grimly she ignored that small part of her that wanted to. A part of her that remembered the prince and his handsome face, wonderful manners and the way he was the only one to understand when she was making a joke. The way he'd tried to find ways to make palace life less dull without cruelty, anger or rampant idiocy that someone else would have called silliness.

"Anyhow," Azula said, dismissing anything that didn't directly affect her plans with a wave of her hand, "The important thing is that he's supposed to think he's been your boyfriend since you were both fourteen. He'll be suggestible for the first couple hours after he wakes up, so that'll be the time to set your boundaries and everything for the relationship. I'll be telling him he's been sick and we'll go from there." She grinned suddenly. "I can't wait to have the Zuzu I fought in Omashu with us."

She bounded off and Mai stared after her. She had the feeling that preserving that Zuko, the one who'd fought Azula to a standstill in Omashu, the one who'd been travelling on his own and with the Avatar, that would only lead to trouble. But Azula was not one to hear of failings in her plans, and Mai had to admit those plans rarely failed anyhow.

Nonetheless, she was startled the next day to see Zuko showing up. Azula had clearly had her plan in the works for longer than she'd indicated. Azula, standing a little behind her brother, waved urgently at Mai, who braced herself and leaned in for a polite peck on the lips such as her parents always exchanged in public when necessity called for them to demonstrate affection for one another.

When he suddenly pulled her close, kissing her deeply and sending a pleasant shockwave through her of how good it felt, Mai had to pull herself sharply away lest her normal calm crack. She was sharper than she wanted as she informed him, "Zuko! You know that I don't like doing that in front of people."

"I . . ." he shook his head a little. "I'm sorry Mai. Everything's just . . . it feels blurry right now. I'm not remembering things well."

She didn't want him to never do it again, just not where Azula might use it against her. "Well, I suppose I can forgive you. This time."

As he turned to talk to Ty Lee, she shot a carefully sardonic look at Azula, who looked delighted at the potential upset on her hands.

This anchoring would have to be handled with all due caution.


	21. Betrayal

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: This request comes from Namacub95. Not a lot here, but I hope it's what was wanted.

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><p>Zuko's crazy sister was there, and for a moment Katara wasn't sure she'd manage to make it out. But then Iroh and Aang were behind her, then beside her and the tide of battle turned. Grimly she tuned out the sickening crunches and thuds of their opponents hitting walls and floor and concentrated on fighting her way out. Through it all the feel of bending, of pushing her limits and the feel of the water in the air and in her blood sang to her, beauty that underlay everything she did as a bender.<p>

A feeling of joy shot through her when she saw the last member of their team appear, unharmed. Zuko was there. "Zuko!" she shouted with happiness.

He froze, looking confused. And then Azula shouted, "What are you waiting for?"

. . . Who was she talking to?

Katara hadn't let the interruption slow her, managing to pin Azula and beginning to trap her in ice. But she stopped in shock, confusion and dismay when Zuko freed his sister. "What are you doing?" she asked, aghast.

He stared back at her, those normally expressive golden eyes oddly blank. "What?" he asked, sounding confused. Confused. _What in the Spirits' Names was _he_ confused about?_

Azula shrieked, "Ignore her! She's just trying to confuse you!"

Katara flinched. _She_ was trying to confuse him? What he was doing didn't make sense. When he sent a flame fist at her, she barely blocked in time.

"_I don't even know if my mother and sister are alive or dead because they had to leave before the Fire Nation discovered the enclave in Cheng-Dhu."_

"_He is," Zuko snapped. "I try to forget that I'm part scum."_

"_How are you doing? . . . You're a waterbender, and this is pretty . . . devoid of water."_

"_You don't still believe all that about the war and the superiority of the Fire Nation, right?"_

"Zuko, why?" she asked, her voice cracking.

It didn't make _sense_.

"What are you talking about?" he asked her. As though she wasn't making sense. As though he didn't know her. As though everything he'd seen and done and had done to him didn't matter.

"Why are you doing this? After everything they've done to you, after everything you've said, why would you side with them now?" Katara heard herself pleading. She was ducking and dodging and striking on pure instinct.

For a moment her heart stopped when Azula seemed to magically appear behind Iroh. And then Azula began to airbend at the attacking Dai Li and Azula and her friends. Aiko. For that appearance alone Katara breathed a sigh of relief, even as she shook her head in confusion at the unexpected appearance of Zuko's other sister.

Zuko looked just as confused as Azula, his confusion increasing as the woman tearfully exclaimed, "I guess mother was right, there is no way to redeem a firebender." Then she and Zuko went at each other with a clash like two icebergs colliding and Katara's full concentration was taken up by keeping Azula from getting the better of her.

The relief from her shock and grief at Zuko's turncoat behaviour was short-lived. Aang had reached into himself, somehow summoning the power of the Avatar without it being a matter of panicked reaction, but while everyone froze to stare in awe, Azula attacked, sending Aang flying into the wall, Katara praying that the blackened spot on his chest was just his clothing.

She heard Aiko shouting at her to take Aang and run, Iroh covering her retreat, letting himself be absorbed into the masses of attacking Dai Li to divert them from going after Katara.

From there it all blurred into the swish of water as she sped through the underground, the rumble of stone as Toph took over the burden of rapid travel by bending while Katara desperately used every bit of her internal resources to try to heal Aang, cursing herself for scorning the healers at the Northern Tribe now that she needed those skills.

She was too occupied with keeping Aang alive and getting them all to safety aboard the ship her father's men had stolen from the Fire Nation to say more to the others than a terse, "Zuko turned on us. He's with _them_ now."

It wasn't until later, sat on the deck of the ship, Shuga on one side, Appa on the other and Toph, Sokka, her father and Bato sitting beside them, that she was able to tell them of the fight, of Zuko's turning on her, of Aiko taking on her sister and Iroh's sacrifice to allow her and Aang to escape. "And it was like he didn't," her breath hitched. She wasn't going to cry over that firebending jerk, _she wasn't!_ "It was like he didn't even understand why I was surprised," Katara told them. "He just . . . stared." A tear dropped onto her hand despite the way she'd sternly told herself she wasn't going to cry.

"I don't understand," Toph said blankly. "Sparky promised he'd be here."

Sokka was just as confused. "He hated them. They were the worst people . . . ever. Maybe . . ." he trailed off. Like he couldn't think of a reason either.

The tears came faster and Katara couldn't stop them. And no matter how mad she was at her dad for not being there when they needed him, for Bato to have to take Sokka through his manhood ceremony when it should have been him, for making Sokka think he had to be the Big Man Of The Tribe, for making Gran-gran have to be the chief even though she was old and tired and Katara to be scared and alone and have no one to lean on because Sokka would baby her if she showed any weakness, for all that, he was there, right then. So she leaned into him and sobbed.

Then sobbed all the harder when the unfamiliarly familiar scent of seal blubber and fur, the solid feeling of a heavily muscled body wrapped in a parka and the rumble of her father's voice curled around her. Because it just reminded her of the cinnamon and wood smoke, slender whipcord and inner flame that was missing.


	22. The Other

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: KaliAnn and Bibliophile109 asked for this one in a way, but I have a smattering of interactions that I'll be doing, rather than a concentrated single section. Hope you all like.

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><p>Azula woke, irate. There was only one way she could have been knocked out of the fight, and that was if her brother had stabbed her in the back, despite everything she'd done to bring him back in line.<p>

She was angry until she stepped out of the room she'd been in and heard, second-hand, that he'd hit both her and her doppelganger, then gone on to finish the invasion of Ba Sing Se handily. Watching him command the troops made her feel like she was swelling with pride, because here was the brother she recalled from her earliest childhood, the one who stood strong and tall and did no wrong.

So, she left him to it, telling him absently that she was oh-so-kindly letting him prove himself that way and went to find the girl that looked just like her.

The woman was chained up, looking furious, and Azula sat down and stared at her. It was a stare she'd practiced, having taken the time to memorise what looks worked best to get instant results from people, then practicing until they were reflexive. A moment later she started. Because the look on that face was the same as her own. "Who are you?" she demanded.

Her twin's eyes narrowed. "I am Aiko, eldest daughter of Lady Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai," she said. And grubby, dressed in those sad Earth Kingdom rags, nails ragged from hard work, she still looked like a daughter of the Fire Lord.

"That's a lie," snapped Azula. "Zuko's the eldest, I don't have a sister."

The copy tilted her head in something that looked like acknowledgement. "Not one that the Fire Lord would accept," she said pointedly. "Given that I am an airbender like our mother."

Azula reared back. "What?"

"Mother's an airbender," said the Other. "She used to bring Zuko with her to our enclave in Cheng Dhu. She was trying to change his basic nature into something less violent, something good. But I guess she was right. Firebenders are completely irredeemable."

"I prefer to call us ambitious," Azula said tightly. This smug superiority being aimed at her by one of the pathetic, wispy airbenders was intolerable. "And better that than the lazy wastes of space and bending that were the airbenders."

"What you call lazy, I call peaceful, contemplative, and far more intelligent than any warmongering beast of a firebender."

Azula paused a moment, frowning as a thought occurred to her. If mother was truly an airbender like the twisted mirror in front of her, that would have explained why she hated Azula, and her attempts to twist Zuko into being some sort of sad, peaceful airbender copy in order to take the throne would explain why she'd doted on her son so much.

The way this airbender was claiming all firebenders were beasts might also explain Zuko's strange obsessions with honour and fairness. "So was it our mother's fault Zuko doesn't have the guts to do what needs doing?" Azula asked sharply.

The Other suddenly wilted. "Perhaps," she said softly. "I suppose you offered him something he couldn't find with the Avatar. He's always been made to feel unworthy, trying to pretend to be an airbender. At least with you he'd be with his own kind, I suppose." She sighed. "I just thought I finally had the brother I always wanted."

"Well, at least one of us got that," Azula said with a smirk and swept out. As she strode down the hall she saw Zuko wince, putting a hand to his head and Mai whisper something to him. Mai, acting in her role as the anchor keeping this brand new Zuko in place. The smirk fell from her face and she hurried to retake her control of the invasion of Ba Sing Se.


	23. The Wrong Herd

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kimberly T and Somariel both asked for more general perspectives on Shuga's PoV of Zuko post-brainwashing. There were some other more specific requests, so those names will go up with those postings. Whenever I manage to get around to posting more. *Looks away sheepishly*.

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><p>Something was wrong with her Lifter. That much Shuga knew. Why had he left his herd to go off with Badsisterzula and her herdmates? It made no sense, but Shuga went after him, because while the rest of LeeZuko's proper herd had chosen to stay with Cloud Shaper's human, Aang, she couldn't abandon her human. So, after a good nuzzle with her mate and a promise to come back, she'd left to bring LeeZuko back to his senses.<p>

At first she'd just followed at a distance, but eventually she'd chosen a time when there was no Badsisterzula with him, no Bouncy One and no Black Snake. LeeZuko was spending an awful lot of time with the Black Snake. Oh, she knew their human names were Ty Lee and Mai, but she didn't like anyone who was going to be herdmates with Badsisterzula.

Shuga decided to call her that because her human coverings were always black and she was like a snake. Still and silent and uninteresting until she chose to strike. Then she moved fast, faster than any other human Shuga had ever seen. She didn't like LeeZuko spending time with the Black Snake when he could be with the nice Katara girl.

Finally though, one day he had an argument with Badsisterzula and the Black Snake and was alone. So, she carefully landed on the path behind him, waiting to be noticed. When he did, he looked startled. Then he started walking slowly towards her as though she were something scary. She held still even though she wanted to give him a good, affectionate bath. He reacted badly to it, like a calf trying to get out of being washed by its dam, but just like the token wriggling protest of an infant bison, he didn't really mean it. Except when he was wearing his nice coverings.

Still, something was wrong, and Shiga remembered well the time that one of the other bisons in the herd, Strong Leg, had become ill with something that made him think the rest of the herd were all platypus bears and things. She didn't want to make LeeZuko think she was a platypus bear.

He edged closer, until finally he was decently close. "Hey there," he said.

Shuga carefully stepped forward and gave him a cleaning lick to try to get some of the Black Snake's smell off him. "Ew," he said, and started wiping at himself just like a wriggling calf. She rumbled her amusement at him, her silly little Lifter. She stepped closer again, and he stopped, gently patting her on the nose. He looked about as scared of doing it as he had back when she was still small and he'd helped her suckle.

Still, it was progress, and at some point she'd get out of him what was wrong and why he'd decided to leave his herd for Badsisterzula's herd.

They were interrupted by the Black Snake coming back and Shuga slipped away. She'd had lots of practice over the years at hiding from the Bad Ones with their pointy armour. This would just be more of the same.

Because she'd sworn she wasn't leaving LeeZuko without a proper herd and she wasn't about to break that promise now.


	24. Even if

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kurama's Foxy Rose specifically requested Shuga's PoV of The Beach, so here it is.

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><p>She remembered Ember Island, one of the few times LeeZuko's Badmother and the Predator-in-human-skin he thought was his father (Shuga had her doubts on that one) hadn't acted horrible to her Lifter.<p>

But he wasn't there with them when they'd pretended to be nice to him, he was there with Badsisterzula's herdmates. He found his way to their old meeting spot and Shuga settled in to let him talk to her the way he used to before. To listen to how much Badsisterzula and her herdmates had made him hurt this time.

He was her smart LeeZuko still, even though he couldn't remember and she just didn't know why, and he climbed up to scratch her in all the ways she'd trained him to do. "Hey girl," he said. "I'm glad to see you. You're the least confusing part of my life right now, you know?"

She had to listen carefully, because human communication was very hard. Sure there were the things she'd learned from repetition, but when he wanted to have a long talk with her? That meant she had to distinguish all those little fiddly sounds he made. There were a lot of fiddly sounds. Then she had to respond with a sound that prompted him to keep talking.

It worked. "I told you all about my girlfriend, Mai-"

Shuga couldn't help it. She grumbled at him, because Black Snake was not as good for him as his herdmate, the Water girl Katara. Katara had healed Shuga and her Cloud Shaper several times and was a very good herd matriarch for their little herd, especially when Cloud Shaper's human, Aang, got all rowdy.

It wasn't the first time she'd let him know she didn't like the Black Snake and it probably wouldn't be the last. LeeZuko was very obstinate. That hadn't changed from before, but his not remembering meant he didn't realise she was bad for him. "Well, that's what you think. No one asked you to date her."

And a good thing too, she rumbled at him. Sometimes her Lifter didn't have the sense the Spirits gave sea monkeys. That didn't mean she wasn't bad for him and Shuga grumbled to make sure he knew it. Some days she was just tempted to sit on him like her mother had done when she was still a calf and had been bad. Maybe just plop her tail on top of him so that he'd learn a lesson. He wasn't as hardy as a bison after all.

She stilled at once when he started talking. "I'm sure you'll be happy to hear we had a fight. I mean, it's my fault, but we've been dating for three years, I thought she'd know me better. At least enough to know when I'm trying to apologise. Especially after she'd made that crack when my head was hurting so much."

Hurting was bad! What had Badsisterzula and the Black Snake done to her Lifter? She hastily shimmied so he'd slide off her back, then started sniffing at him and poking at all his little fiddly human parts to see what was wrong. Things didn't hurt for no reason, and if Badsisterzula had started being terrible to her Lifter like Badmother had . . . well, she didn't know what she'd do, but she'd make sure something happened to her.

Then he started saying silly things. "I'm fine now. It was just a really bad headache." She looked sternly at him, carefully trying to arrange her eyelids the way LeeZuko's Katara did when she was scolding the herd. "Really," he told her trying to sound convincing. "I know I'm having a lot of those lately. They're just . . . aftereffects of whatever it was I had in Ba Sing Se."

There were a lot of expressions she'd learned from Katara, and Shuga used one of them now, rolling her eyes like she saw Katara do to Sokka when he was being ridiculous. Still, whatever had made him forget in Ba Sing Se was part of why he was being silly now. Sighing, she let him get away with it for now and flopped down, poking at LeeZuko to remind him that he hadn't finished scratching her.

It helped her concentrate when he was making all those complicated fiddly noises that she had to listen to. Not to mention that human herds were complicated. He talked on about Badsisterzula, and Shuga listened intently, giving him an encouraging rumble every time he found a really good spot. Sometimes LeeZuko could be almost as good as a bison.

She missed her Cloud Shaper though. She wanted to get back to him very badly. She was beginning to feel heavier than usual and she thought she might be carrying calves. Shuga squinted her eyes in a bison smile to herself as she thought of how LeeZuko was going to overreact when he found out. But now wasn't the time.

"This Aiko woman-" LeeZuko was suddenly saying.

Badsisterko! That . . . Shuga snorted her distaste. She was different than Badsisterzula and just as horrible, saying all the bad things Badmother said about her Lifter. Maybe she'd step on _her_ tail.

"I hadn't told you about her, how can you have an opinion?" asked LeeZuko. It made Shuga sad again. It always came back to the same question. _Why didn't he remember?_ "Wait . . ." He sounded the way he did when he was thinking of something new. Did he remember? "She's an airbender. Did you know her from an airbender enclave?"

Shuga bobbed her head the way humans said yes, and waited anxiously for him to maybe remember. Maybe. "Wow. Anyhow, she's been saying things to Azula, and they're having an effect. I just don't know what it is." Badsisterko and Badsisterzula were making another herd? She'd always though Badmother was silly to split her family up like that into two separate herds, but humans were complicated. "It's like Azula's trying to develop all those family bonds and things that she always said were a sign of weakness, but it's all filtered through . . . through how she normally sees the world."

Through her disappointment that he wasn't remembering at all, Shuga still made the questioning noise. He was still her LeeZuko, and he needed to talk about what the Badsisters were doing. She'd do that for him, because he was her herd, no matter what. Even if he didn't remember being her Lifter ever again.

"I don't know what to do, Shuga. I mean, there's Mai, who's completely changed, Azula, who's changing, and I keep having these dreams about the Avatar and his friends." She felt him change position up there, flopping around. "It doesn't help that my dreams keep insisting that the waterbender is a better kisser than Mai." He rolled over and started scratching again. Good herdmate, she thought fondly. "Do you suppose it's just the lure of the exotic?" He asked.

That was stupid. Katara was good for him. She was a smart lead female and didn't let the males get too out of line, she made LeeZuko feel good and he made her feel good. When LeeZuko wasn't being silly. Shuga made sure he knew that it was stupid.

Which was when they both heard Badsisterzula and her herd approaching. LeeZuko leapt off her back and Shuga slipped quickly away. It was practiced, an easy habit made from repetition. But he didn't remember.

But she'd sworn she'd be his herd, and she would be. Because even if he didn't remember, he was her Lifter, her herdmate, and he always would be.


	25. To Understand

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Ravirn of the Infinite and KaliAnn both asked for the Gaang's reaction to Zuko's betrayal and absence. I'm afraid this got a great deal more abstract than they may have wanted, but that's what came out.

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><p>Each of them put it into words differently.<p>

To Katara it was like something was colder without him there. Like something inside her froze over when every one of her prejudices against firebenders was proved to be right by the one boy who'd proved them wrong at every turn. At night she'd sit up to go look for her stuffed tiger seal replacement and then remember he'd turned on them and left with his sister, his evil sister, not his just kind of self-centred one.

So Katara had no one to confess her fears to that wouldn't either panic or baby her about them. She didn't have someone who would cuddle _her_ instead of asking for comfort. She didn't have that person who would have backed her up when her father got so annoyingly overprotective and Sokka-like. Sokka had learned how to be a sexist jerk from somewhere, after all.

She loved her dad and had missed him, but he still saw her as his little baby girl, not the waterbending master she was now. He didn't see her as the practical force in their travel group with the Avatar, but as a child to be herded around.

Zuko would have helped her figure out how to make him see without letting all her anger at him leaving two kids and a bunch of old people to take care of his tribe in his absence spill out everywhere.

But Zuko was gone. Was a traitor to everything he'd ever said he believed.

The worst part was that she was Water Tribe. Family is everything in the Tribes. He'd left to be with his family, and she couldn't fault him for that, even as her fury at him for treachery got all mixed up with her anger at her dad for leaving and not just somehow _knowing_ she'd changed, compounded by the stress of taking care of Aang and Toph without them realising she was doing it.

And stupid Sokka who kept interrupting her when she was just getting a good cry going because he couldn't leave her alone for a few minutes.

Sokka, who described it as the hole left when a member of your family was gone. Because Zuko was that brother he'd never had, the guy who got guy things and didn't think he was dumb for caring more getting to the goal than some airy-fairy notion of talking people into believing in truth and justice.

Hearing from his sister that Zuko had left them to go back to his family cut like a knife. All the more because Sokka just knew that Zuko was doing it because of some misguided attempt to take away the emptiness that was left by his evil mother and horrible sisters.

It made Sokka feel like he wasn't enough and made him cling closer to Katara because he had to be enough for her, he couldn't lose her too. He'd tried so hard to keep that empty look out of his friend's eyes, tried to keep the knife out of his hand, and he'd failed. He couldn't even be angry with Zuko, because those people the firebender called family had done it to him, had made him so lost he thought they were what family's are.

Only with Master Piandao did Sokka unbend to speak of Zuko, even a little. Remembering careful lessons about how to grip a weapon tightly so it wouldn't go flying, but still loosely enough that you could be flexible in movement, gentle admonishment about stances and how each one led into another, gave you balance or let you lunge and pull back with ease, it stung less when he could put them into the context of other lessons on swordcraft.

But he hid from the rest as he struggled with Katara's unreasoning fury, Aang's confusion and Toph's grief.

Toph, who thought of it as a rhythm gone off kilter. A heartbeat missing from the surrounding percussion she was used to. The way everyone moved around everyone else now filled with hitches and sidesteps that confused her, prevented her from anticipating movements because there was a void where once a stable drumbeat had stabilised Aang's high-strung twitter, weaving a stolid backbeat with the steady ebb and flow that was Katara, counterpoint to Sokka's rapid and jerky movements.

There was no one now who got what it was like to feel like you weren't quite real, and Toph knew that she and Sokka might be the only two who really got that Zuko would have gone back because he was looking for something that was missing.

He wouldn't find it, any more than Toph would find it if she went back to Gaoling.

For all Sokka's sadness, Katara's anger and Toph's loneliness, Aang seemed to understand it the least.

Aang could put no words to it, only confusion. He'd only ever had family made and chosen, not family thrust upon him by fate. He'd so often envied others who had families, envied their bonds that seemed so unbreakable and strong in the face of bonds chosen and created in friendship. But he'd equally never understood it, never seen the way the blood could bind, never understood that.

So, while Katara snarled about how blood would out, Sokka shook his head sadly over the answers Zuko was seeking in the wrong places and Toph tried to hide her grief that Zuko would choose to go back, Aang struggled with confusion.

His teacher and mentor, gone. And for what reason? He was so confused by it all that reaching inside himself for those little voices that would grant him a hint of wisdom, a hint of experience that would explain something too complex, too far out of his understanding, would get him nothing. His chakras that he had come so close to clearing at Ba Sing Se were blocked and clouded once more.

Sometimes he'd get a wisp of sensation from them, faith, trust, a sense of connection to something more than the sum of its parts, deception and trickery. But none of them were more than a flicker, and none could offer him an explanation.

And in some ways, he was most honest of them all, because he didn't let notions of blood kin get in the way of the essential question they all asked and had no answer for.

_Zuko, why?_


	26. Only Logical

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Vaneria Potter asked for Katara/Hama interactions. Here's the problem. I had to frame it in a way that put it into the Airbender's Child universe. Anyone could, and probably has, looked into Katara and Hama and the connection and whatnot between them. It's certainly worth writing, but I'm kind of trying to make these missing scenes from AC, which is all about Zuko. So, I had to make something that was fundamentally nothing to do with Zuko, about Zuko, without making it stupidly about Zuko. So, I wrote Doctor Who fic and let this percolate a while, and while this is very very short, I think I got it. Vaneria, if you're still reading this, I hope it comes close to what you wanted.

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><p>The shock was incredible, but incredible wonderful at the same time. There were so many amazing things Katara had seen on this journey with the Avatar. She'd seen the great cities of the Northern Water Tribe, Omashu and Ba Sing Se, she'd met kings and priests, waterbenders in the swamp and airbenders in the Earth Kingdom.<p>

But in some ways this was the most amazing thing she'd seen yet. This taste of home, this one long-lost waterbender of the Southern Tribe was genuinely incredible to find, here in the Fire Nation.

Honestly, she was fairly certain only Aang could understand this feeling she had. Because until now she was the last. Oh, there was the Northern Tribe, there were the waterbenders of the Great Swamp, she wasn't the only waterbender in the way that Aang had seemed the only airbender, but Katara was the last waterbender of the Southern Tribe.

Until now.

And now Katara could barely contain her excitement. Hama was going to teach her the bending of the Southern Tribe. They left the village in silence, both knowing it was too dangerous to speak of waterbending so far into the Fire Nation. But it wasn't long before they were walking the rocky hills outside the village. On finding a stream in an isolated little pocket, Hama began by first testing Katara to see her skill, then showing her the techniques of the Southern Tribe.

It had been a very long time, it felt, since her lessons at the North Pole, and the forms of the South Pole were not the same as those of the North. The basic forms were the same, yes, but as you became more advanced a changed angle here, a different tilt of the body there and it altered how the water moved, altered how you fought.

Indeed, Hama showed her something very interesting. "You see how a woman's hips move differently than a man's?" she asked.

Katara nodded. "Yugoda explained how there are differences in the way the bones and muscles are put together."

"Exactly," Hama said with a grin. "I've noticed that as you do a counter-sweep you've tended to shift your weight a little awkwardly."

"I don't know how to get it," Katara admitted in frustration. "None of the other students had trouble when Pakku taught them-"

"None of the boys, you mean," Hama told her, wagging a finger in a mock scold. "You see, with the way men distribute their weight, that move tends to be far more difficult for women because our bodies move just a little differently." She took the familiar stance, but as Katara watched in fascination Hama's hips swivelled in a distinctly non-masculine way, taking the counter-sweep's force off of Katara's hands and into her lower body.

She saw now. "Because women's strength is concentrated in the lower body, when we take the force and shift it there we can add power," Katara said, amazed at the difference.

"There's a fundamental difference in the bending taught to women in the Southern Tribe," Hama admitted, "But it has to do with the way centre of gravity and strength are distributed differently in women as compared to men."

They took a break, walking further, leaving the small stream behind. They were back in the barren, dry, rocky hills when Hama continued.

"Growing up at the South Pole, Waterbenders are totally at home surrounded by snow and ice and seas," Hama began. "But, as you probably noticed on your travels, that isn't the case wherever you go."

Katara nodded. "I know, when we were stranded in the desert, I felt like there was almost nothing I could do." She'd felt that way even more as she looked at poor Shuga's tail and Zuko's helpless fluttering . . .

She sharply shook off the melancholy of the thought _why Zuko? _and paid attention to Hama's teaching. But the old woman was looking at her shrewdly, and said, "Something wrong, dear?"

Having a sympathetic elder to talk to broke Katara's reticence, and she poured out the story into the woman's ear. "I just . . . they'd all been horrible to him. There was no reason for him to go back, but he still did," she finished.

Hama looked at her sympathetically, but sternly. "You're young, Katara. That's the only reason I would make this allowance. I know how hopeful you can be when you're young. Hopeful that things will turn out right, hopeful that Fire Nation people would turn out right." She sighed and cupped Katara's cheeks in her workworn hands, saying, "You have to understand the monsters that they are."

"But-" Katara started, thinking of children dancing in a cave, of a fire sage risking everything to help the Avatar, Fire Nation generals in self-chosen exile to protest the Fire Lord's plans to conquer and destroy with fire all that isn't of Fire and two guards sitting alone in a cold shack because they had a duty to remain there – a story Zuko had told her about after she'd gotten better from that horrible illness that had made Sokka hallucinate he was the King of the Earthbending Meat People.

"Some hide it better than others," Hama told her with a dismissive wave. "But they're all the same deep down." She continued the lesson, pulling water from the air, teaching Katara little tricks only a waterbender in this strangely dry island nation could have discovered.

It stood to reason, Katara told herself as Hama destroyed the life of the lilies to show how to find water, even when there seemed to be none, that the old woman would be so biased. She'd been held captive, perhaps she'd become too frail to make the journey home after all this time. Perhaps she'd even been too scared to go back because here she was hidden in plain sight, while the Southern Water Tribe had been raided again and again, even after they'd taken all the waterbenders.

It made sense, Katara thought to herself, that Hama would advocate ruthlessness. She'd been away from family for so long she'd lost that softening of mercy and kindness that comes with having others to rely on, who you loved and loved you back. Zuko was the same way, and perhaps Hama's lessons were her way of reaching for family in the way that Zuko had when he'd turned on them.

It was only inevitable, Katara thought as she sobbed, inconsolable, wanting Sokka and Aang's well-meaning kindness to just _go away_. If everyone you looked up to and emulated turned out to be vengeance-filled, evil monsters, it was only inevitable that it would happen to you too.

For the first time Katara was afraid of her bending, and for the first time, she felt like she understood why Zuko had always been so afraid of his own.


	27. Rejoining the herd

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kimberly T and Kurama's Foxy Rose asked for Shuga's PoV on Zuko meeting up with the Gaang at the Western Air Temple. I think I may be losing Shuga's voice after too much Doctor Who, but I'm trying. Here you go, folks.

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><p>It was a badger frog.<p>

That much, Shuga was sure about. LeeZuko seemed to be talking to it. Sometimes he'd done the same with the turtle ducks at the palace and she didn't know why. It wasn't like they understood him. What she did know was that his human fiddly noises were all ones he normally made at his herdmates, not badger frogs.

So, she peered at him, once again trying to understand why he thought he should be talking to something that certainly wasn't even as smart as Badmother on a good day.

What made her really grouchy, though, was that he was delaying her getting back to Cloud Shaper. He'd better not be putting it off because he didn't want her to have calves. Just because he was too slow to see that he should mate with the Water girl before someone like Cloud Shaper's human got to her didn't mean that he got to keep her from her mate.

"What do you think, Shuga?" he asked. "Should I just fall on my knees and beg, or maybe I should go and get something to give them." At the sound of her human name, she'd gone back to paying attention, but this was as silly as when he'd wanted Badmother to be nice to him. So, while he was making more fiddly human noises she reached over and picked him up by his coverings, making sure to grab him somewhere he'd have trouble putting up a really effective struggle, like a calf that needed to be taken somewhere whether it wanted or not, and carried him over to his herd.

She carefully dropped him and then left him to reacclimatise to his herd. She wouldn't help by prodding him, not when Katara was there to do it for him.

The next thing she did was head over to Cloud Shaper and give him a good grooming. His human cared about him a lot, but seemed to get a bit lax on the middle of the back, where the saddle normally sat. It was a hard place for a bison to reach on themselves, so she happily set to clearing up the matting that had set in and listening to his rumbles of pleasure.

When Cloud Shaper started giving her a good grooming in return, it was interrupted by LeeZuko. He was screaming, and Shuga hastened to join him, nosing over him quickly, then giving him a good lick in relief, right after Cloud Shaper had affectionately licked him. She offered Cloud Shaper a nuzzle for being so kind to her Lifter.

"I'm pretty sure that's not helping him," she heard Sokka say. She just glared at him. Just because he was part of LeeZuko's herd didn't mean she wouldn't give him a good nip. He was good for LeeZuko, but she'd just thank him not to be all crooked tailed around her. "But go ahead," Sokka continued, blithely ignoring her. "I'm certainly enjoying his humiliation."

Oh, she'd be watching him now.

She was so caught up in glaring that she missed out on some fiddly human noises. When LeeZuko stood, she was taken by surprise when Katara smacked him with her paw the way Badmother had so often. Shuga was brought up short before she lunged angrily at her by Cloud Shaper's rumble of warning.

Katara had been making sad tail-stepped-on noises for so long, she was just being angry the way Shuga's mother had been angry the first time Shuga went off to stay with LeeZuko away from the herd. It wasn't at all the same sort of angry as Badmother. Sighing, she left with Cloud Shaper. She couldn't help LeeZuko with this meeting with his herd. He had to deal with human herd things on his own, because human herds were strange and complicated.

Still, she'd be there when he needed her.


	28. Reintegration

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kurama's Foxy Rose asked for Sokka's PoV on Zuko meeting up with the Gaang at the Western Air Temple too. Hopefully not too long from now I'll add the other PoV requests from this scene, Katara and Toph. But you've all been waiting for, like, ever for this, so update now, rest of PoVs later.

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><p>It was kind of just like the awkward teenager that Sokka knew Zuko was, that he would show up being carried by Shuga, not on her back, but with the seat of his pants in her mouth. He had to admit it was amusing, but it was a lot less amusing that Zuko had come crawling back. He couldn't just bounce from one side to another, and as much as Sokka wanted his friend back, and suspected he was hurting from things his 'family' had done to him, there were consequences.<p>

So he waited a moment, letting Teo, Haru and Jet's little band snigger at Zuko a moment, let Katara mock the fact that the back of Zuko's pants was ripped open before putting in a few coppers coins.

"As much as I'm enjoying seeing you humiliated after what you did," Sokka told him, "I have to wonder why it is we shouldn't be tossing you off the cliff and pretending we don't know you."

Several expressions flickered over Zuko's face, so quickly that Sokka couldn't really get a grasp on any of them. His face settled on lost finally, and it made him worry, reflexively, about the boy who had become and been his best friend in and for so short a time.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't . . . I don't even know what's going on. I . . . a couple days ago I found out my sister had gotten the Dai Li to . . . to take away my memories, to change them into fake ones." He looked pleadingly at the small group. "I don't even know what's real any more. All I know is that I keep having these memories and they have to do with you. I can't promise you anything. I just want to know who I am." When silence met his words, Zuko looked away. "I didn't really expect that you'd believe me," he said.

It was remarkably convenient, Sokka thought. His first impulse was to forgive everything, but that was a very wild tale, and he and Zuko had talked before about the obligation to believe stories that were so crazy you knew that a person had to be telling the truth, because if they were lying they'd have said something plausible. Which just meant that Zuko knew what Sokka thought on the matter and would be more than capable of coming up with something to exploit it.

Except that he knew Zuko and Zuko's sense of honour. His sense of honour wouldn't allow him to do something like that. He hoped.

He'd forgotten about Toph. Forgotten that the brat could practically read minds. He normally hated it, hated the way she couldn't let you get away with a little white lie, even, but now he was grateful. "He's telling the truth," she said. And that was great.

Well, it was awful that Zuo had been through something that horrible, but it was great that he hadn't just turned on them like the jerkbender they'd all thought he was being. So, great and awful at the same time. Was there a word for that? Like 'grawful' or something?

"You mean like Jet?" Katara asked eagerly.

He'd forgotten about Jet. He'd forgotten about the smug bastard who'd turned into a decent person once he'd forgotten all about the Fire Nation and his vendetta. "Who?" Zuko asked.

Sokka waved his hand, saying, "Not important," because they were talking about something else just then.

"What do you mean, Jet's not important?" demanded the Duke. "He died to save all of you and you don't even care?"

He'd also forgotten that Jet's friends were there, his little band that had looked up to him, had relied on him and thought he hung the moon. Quickly turning, he tried to fix his mistake. "That's not what I meant, Duke-"

"It's _the_ Duke," interrupted the kid, pedantically.

Thankfully Haru and Teo stepped in to let Sokka get back to the issue at hand. He'd apologise and try to explain later. "Was – did I go by Lee before?" Zuko asked.

Sokka didn't know what to say to that, but Aang was thinking faster and suggested that Katara try to do for Zuko what she'd done for Jet to make him remember.

And then there was screaming. Zuko was still a moment as Katara put her hands on his head, but only a second after the blue glow of her bending appeared his head snapped back out of her hands and he clutched at his head, curling into a ball and screaming. Katara dropped to her knees next to him, doing something with her waterbending, but nothing seemed to help.

It was an interminable stretch while Toph stood, shaking and staring and Sokka watched helplessly, and Zuko seemed like he was being tortured in some way. Finally he stopped, his body relaxing as he uncurled from the way he'd balled up, his hands falling away from his head in exhaustion. "What happened?" he asked.

"You were screaming," Aang said, sounding as horrified as Sokka felt.

Katara told him, "I'd done that before to help someone else brainwashed by the Dai Li. They were more . . . thorough with you." She bit her lip a moment, then added, "It's like they attached pain to your real memories."

That wasn't good. It was all bad, and Sokka once again felt angry at Zuko's whole so-called family. Not only had they made him think he was worth nothing, now they were taking away the memories that made a person who they were from him. "That's why I keep waking up with a headache," Zuko said, sounding relieved.

It was surreal. It was surreal because all this time they'd thought he'd gone back to his family, when it was his family that had tricked him into thinking he'd never left, and now he was sounding relieved that he was in pain every morning. It was like the relief Zuko had shown every time they'd assured him that he was their friend and they weren't going to abandon him because of some single aspect of himself that he couldn't help. Completely nuts, but showing how beaten down he was without knowing it.

Sokka made snide comments about Shuga licking Zuko to centre himself. To grab at some sense of normalcy with the massive upset that had just happened. When Katara shouted at the firebender and hit him, then ran away sobbing though, he was forced to translate for his sister. "Katara nearly killed herself healing Aang," Sokka explained. "She felt particularly bad because she was the one who encouraged Aang to bring you with us and . . ." Sokka shrugged, because emotions and girly things like that weren't really his thing. It wasn't something that was easy to explain anyhow, the illogic of being angry with someone because you'd been worried or because they'd made a mistake or had something done to them. He settled for, "It's just a little hard, you know? I mean, I think we all get that the Dai Li made you think something else, but . . ." he shrugged again, not having the words to explain right.

"I didn't just . . . just think something else," Zuko pleaded. "Azula said . . . right before I left, I wound up confronting Azula. She said I was banished when I was thirteen. I didn't even know that. I just thought I'd been at the palace the whole time. The useless child, you know? Azula's going to get the Fire Throne because I'm just that pathetic. Forget tradition and the right of the older son to get the throne."

He stopped and pressed his lips together as though he'd said too much. Knowing Zuko's pride, he probably felt he had. Sokka knew he'd already made up his mind, Zuko had never done anything before this to warrant a lack of trust, and his story was too . . . it made too much sense not to be true.

But actions have consequences, and Sokka still remembered hearing Katara and Toph crying, each trying to hide it from everyone else night after night. He remembered Aang's lost looks and confusion and his own hurt that he wasn't enough to keep Zuko from going over to the wrong side. His awareness that they were going to meet on the opposite sides of the war someday was at war with his friendship for the firebender. Friendship won after Toph had stomped off in high dudgeon about Zuko's calling her 'flower' and Aang heading off to try to keep the peace between the volatile members of their group. Zuko muttered about being a substandard bender with no memory and Sokka felt the familiar exasperation well up.

"We're going to have to go through this all over again, aren't we?"

"What?" Zuko asked.

Sokka rolled his eyes. "You, going on and on about how you're worthless and whatever stupid ideas your family put into your head. Again."

"Why would you say my family and not just Azula?" Zuko asked.

Spirits and spitballs. "Let me guess," Sokka said, "Now you think your mother was a wonderful loving woman who never did any wrong." Zuko was silent, but contemplative looking the way he always was when someone hit him with the logic that his acting like a decent human all the time was good evidence that he _was_ a decent human. "You know what? Never mind. We'll just try to remind you of reality, and hope that you catch up to the rest of us someday."

"Excuse me?" Zuko said, affronted. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Sokka told him, "That eventually I'll manage to convince you that it's bad when people say horrible things about you."

"Says the guy saying horrible things about me," Zuko replied.

Sokka grinned, it being only a little forced. "See? It's working already." His doubts were welling up again, but he tried to push them aside for the camaraderie they'd had before.

"I'll show you working," said the firebender and launched himself at Sokka.

Too soon.

_Katara, bruised and crying as she explained that Zuko had as much done this to her as Azula and her cronies. Aang, burned and so close to death because Zuko was on the wrong side now. Night after night spent talking with his dad to force the idea into his head that he couldn't go easy on Zuko when they faced each other on the battlefield_.

Too soon.

His sword was out by reflex, stopping the attack, the flash of red and black sparking a defensive movement that came from years of fear and hatred of the people who wore those colours.

Zuko was frozen and pale, and Sokka swallowed back the sharp words on his tongue. "Sorry, I . . . It's just going to take a while," Sokka told him. There wasn't anything else he could say after being the one to bring live steel to brotherly wrestling.

"Yeah," Zuko echoed bleakly. "Time."

For someone dressed in as attention-catching a colour as red, Zuko did a remarkable job at being invisible, avoiding everyone and making it impossible to approach him casually, making it impossible to be approachable or friendly, because everything would be a rebuke. Sokka spent the evening thinking hard about how to come at the problem, given that Zuko's natural wariness of people would make it hard to be sincere after this sort-of betrayal of his trust.

In the end it was Toph who broke through, mainly because she had no tact normally, so there was no need for her to be tactful now. Sokka left her to lay the groundwork for trust again. He'd step in once Zuko wasn't as jumpy as a rabaroo on a sugar high.


	29. Uncontrolled

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kurama's Foxy Rose asked for Katara's PoV at WAT, Castlejune and Kimberly T both wanted Katara's PoV on Toph snuggling with Zuko, but I didn't have much there, so it's kinda folded in at the end.

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><p>It was only natural for her to want to check that Zuko hadn't been seriously hurt, given that, even though he was a traitor he was still a person and deserved to be treated that way.<p>

So, she circled around while he was rubbing his rear end and saw his pants torn open and his loincloth clearly visible. It was dark red silk if she was any judge. Very nice. "Well, bruised or not, it's a nice view," she commented. "I think it'll get drafty, though." It was that or yell at him, and she'd done that once before only to feel all guilty after. So, she stuffed those angry feelings down to channel her inner Sokka.

Still, her hand itched to slap him for turning on them, making her worry and for being stupid. Because clearly something stupid had happened that had made him think Azula and the Fire Lord would be decent to him.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't . . . I don't even know what's going on. I . . . a couple days ago I found out my sister had gotten the Dai Li to . . . to take away my memories, to change them into fake ones. I don't even know what's real any more. All I know is that I keep having these memories and they have to do with you. I can't promise you anything. I just want to know who I am." Katara felt her hope surge as he said it. He hadn't turned on them, Hama was wrong and maybe everything could be okay. She felt so jumbled up inside that she didn't know what she felt. "I didn't really expect that you'd believe me," he said after a long pause.

Then Toph said he was telling the truth. Which meant, "You mean, like Jet?" she asked, so used to his being part of the group, even after all this time, she'd forgotten he wasn't there and didn't know about Jet's memory and the Dai Li.

She left Haru and Teo to comfort the Duke about Sokka's insensitivity, pulling water from her waterskin, determined to fix Zuko. She was _going_ to bring him back and make him better. This time, unlike with Jet, she knew what she was doing and was prepared for it. The small flashes of memory through his eyes, the way she could feel what he was thinking, a little.

"_Pain and suffering will be your teacher."_

"_Lee and his bison/ makes me wanna hurl./ We all know that/ it's 'cause he can't get a girl!"_

"_Oh, Zuzu, pathetic as ever."_

_A five-year-old girl had screamed as her father, trying to keep soldiers out of their hovel-like home in the Lower Ring, was blasted backwards by the stone fists of the Dai Li, hitting the wall and slumping to the ground with blood trickling from his nose and mouth._

"_I just . . . my head started to hurt all of a sudden," Zuko said, baffled. "Then I . . . I think I hallucinated."_

"_You were a lot less concerned about Zuko before you had the Dai Li take away his memories and put fake ones in their place. Why isn't that working?"_

He was screaming. Screaming, and Katara desperately struggled to put the barriers on his memories back into place. Someone had done horrible things to his mind and she couldn't seem to help. On top of that, everything she did to ease his pain seemed to make it worse.

Pulling away, Katara stared down at Zuko, horrified. She had caused him this pain, on top of the pain of everything else he'd been through. His eyes drifted open from where they'd squeezed shut with the agony of his memories and the pain the Dai Li had arranged would occur any time he tried to gain access to his real past. "What did you do?" he asked Katara, sounding accusatory.

Guilt stabbed at her along with a sense of affront that he'd act like she'd _try_ to hurt him. He knew her better than that. She also stuffed down the reminder her conscience gave her that he couldn't remember her, so how could he know her?

"I'd done that before to help someone else brainwashed by the Dai Li. They were more . . . thorough with you," she explained. "It's like they attached pain to your real memories." They hadn't done that with Jet, but given Azula being involved it made sense the pain would be added.

Katara let herself get shoved aside by Shuga, Toph and Sokka, trying desperately not to collapse into a puddle of tears, especially after Toph made it sound like she'd been doing nothing _but_ crying. _Annoying little earthbender_. But then Zuko started to sit up and Katara shoved Toph aside again. She was the healer in their group and she should be there to make sure that Zuko wasn't going to hurt himself getting up too soon. "Are you sure you should sit up?" she asked solicitously. About to clarify and ask whether he was feeling dizzy or ill, she was prevented by Zuko's answer, which wasn't particularly useful, actually.

"I have to get up sometime," Zuko said with a sigh. He pulled himself up, straightened, then turned to Katara. "I'm okay."

In a flash, all her worry and fear and concern evaporated like water turned to steam, and the anger she'd felt at his defection and treachery exploded like a geyser. Some distant part of her scolded even as her hand reached back, gained momentum and swung around to slap him. She couldn't control herself as all those emotions rioted, exploding and boiling over like a tightly lidded pot on the fire. "That's for nearly getting Aang killed!" she yelled. Then she started hitting him more. "And that's for turning on us! That's for making your uncle sad! How! Could! You! Just! Do! That!" Every word was punctuated with a slap to his arms or chest.

"Ow! I'm sorry! Ow!" He was curled in on himself, flinching away and not responding, even though she knew he was good enough to keep her from hitting him like that. His passivity in the face of her anger broke through the haze of emotion, and Katara realised she was blaming him for something he couldn't be held responsible for. What kind of horrible person was she that she'd do this to him?

Bursting into tears, she fled before she hurt Zuko more, before she made more of a fool of herself and before she had to listen to Toph get snide about how overemotional she was.

The whole evening as they sat beside the fire, she kept trying to think of how to talk to him, how to apologise and explain it was just how worried and upset she'd been, not that she was _really_ angry with him. But he was reticent, understandably after she'd been hitting him for no good reason, and she couldn't think of any way to broach the subject without sound like she was making excuses.

And when Toph plonked herself down next to Zuko at bedtime, demanding that he cuddle with her, Katara felt she deserved the loss of her replacement stuffed tiger seal.

It took her a long time to fall asleep, staring into the dark where she knew Toph lay snuggled up to Zuko.


	30. Out of Step

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: Kurama's Foxy Rose and newboy both wanted Toph's PoV of Zuko's grand reentry at the WAT, and Kimberly T and Kurama's Foxy Rose wanted Toph's PoV of snuggling with Zuko. So here you go, and I think I'm finally done with this scene.

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><p>It was a bit of a strange coincidence that just as Toph was reviewing all her interactions with Zuko one more time, just to see if there was something she'd missed or something she could have done, Zuko should have arrived.<p>

Toph had the vague feeling at times that she and Aang were the only two who were comfortable at the Western Air Temple. Aang because it was his own people who'd built it, so it was just an Aang sort of place, and her because she wasn't hung up like everyone else was on how things looked. The floor was solid under her feet and so was the roof above. While the others twittered about things being upside-down, she just got on with things.

In any event, Zuko landed with an amusing thump on the ground, rubbing his rear end and complaining that Shuga had bitten him. Apparently she'd also ripped his pants open, and Toph smirked, feeling the way his heartbeat altered with his embarrassment.

And then he was explaining himself. Telling them why he'd left, and it was both better and worse that Toph had imagined.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't . . . I don't even know what's going on." The beat of his pulse, the way he shifted his weight and the sound of his breath speeding up told her that this was truth. He kept talking even as she wondered what that could mean.

"I . . . a couple days ago I found out my sister had gotten the Dai Li to . . . to take away my memories, to change them into fake ones." Truth, his breath speeding his heart pounding oh, so loudly in Toph's senses. He didn't know because he couldn't remember, and Toph felt sick at the thought again. She'd felt that way upon meeting Jet the first time, upon hearing about the Joo Dees, but this was even worse. When people couldn't remember things, couldn't remember their pasts, you were taking away a part of them, part of what made them who they were.

"I don't even know what's real any more. All I know is that I keep having these memories and they have to do with you." His breaths were long and deep and fast, verging on hyperventilation, and Toph thought about how empty she'd been, how alone and lonely and ignorant before she'd gone travelling with Aang and Katara and Sokka and Zuko. Imagined going back to how she'd been before, but without ever knowing why she'd feel like something was missing. Imagined becoming a doll again, imagined Zuko becoming not-real again.

"I can't promise you anything. I just want to know who I am." Toph could feel Sokka's doubt, could feel Katara's tension, could tell no one knew what to say. The silence seemed to weigh on Zuko. He sagged. "I didn't really expect that you'd believe me," he said.

But Toph suddenly knew what to say. Knew it was the most important thing she could say to help put their little family back together again. "He's telling the truth," she told them. Now that they knew they could bring him back to normal, now that they knew they could all stop being angry at him because he hadn't done anything wrong, because Azula had stolen part of him away, rather than him giving up on them.

Katara tensed. "You mean, like Jet?" she asked. She sounded hopeful.

"Who?" Zuko asked.

Sokka waved a dismissive hand. "Not important."

While the Duke kicked up a stink over his friend, Toph just listened. Because things were still off kilter and everyone was dancing around and around Zuko, and they were having to resettle their rhythms again. When Katara offered to try to get Zuko's real memories back, Toph hoped that it could fix their problems fast.

She knew even before he screamed that something was wrong. His heartbeat sped up, his muscles locked, and then Toph couldn't hear anything but his screaming. It drowned out everything but her connection to the earth. Clapping her hands over her ears, she squeezed her eyes shut reflexively, though it did nothing, suppressing whimpers.

No one was looking at her when Zuko stopped screaming and sank back into the ground, trembling and gasping. "What did you do?" Zuko rasped to Katara.

"You were _screaming_," Aang said.

Katara was shaking almost as much as Zuko. "I'd done that before to help someone else brainwashed by the Dai Li. They were more . . . thorough with you. It's like they attached pain to your real memories." Toph's hands clenched into fists and she wished to have the Dai Li there so she could give them the beating they deserved.

"That's why I keep waking up with a headache," Zuko said, sounding oddly relieved.

It took Shuga and Sokka's exchange before Toph felt she could move. Determined that no one should know that she'd been all soppy and weak, Toph sat down next to him, saying, "I've had to put up with Sweetness there being all weepy over you for _months._ You owe me."

"How do you figure?" Zuko asked her.

"She _cried_ on me." Toph almost moved to help Zuko when he began to stand, but Katara was there first.

When she freaked out at Zuko, Toph held back. Sparky was tough, he could take it, especially since Katara wasn't really hitting him. Toph knew Katara could hit hard when she wanted, but whatever this was, it was kind of the same thing as all those times Katara had balled up in a corner away from everyone else and cried over Zuko.

Katara fled crying, and Toph let her. She wanted to stay with Sparky. She'd promised herself and him that she'd always make sure he felt real, and he was going to need that now more than ever if Katara was going to be weird.

"I didn't just . . . just think something else," Zuko was saying. "Azula said . . . right before I left, I wound up confronting Azula. She said I was banished when I was thirteen. I didn't even know that. I just thought I'd been at the palace the whole time." They'd taken him away from himself, Toph thought. She'd been right. Everything that Zuko had been when she'd met him, everything that he'd been when he'd met Aang and Sokka and Katara, they'd taken that away. How dare they?

"The useless child, you know?" _Toph's blind, she'll never be anything, never marry well, never bend. _ "Azula's going to get the Fire Throne because I'm just that pathetic." _We'll just have to make sure we find a son-in-law who can inherit the business and do well with it._ "Forget tradition and the right of the older son to get the throne." _I know the law states that without any other children she's the heir, but what can a blind girl do?_

Aang's voice broke through her thoughts. "You didn't remember any of us?"

Zuko shook his head. "As far as I was aware, I hadn't ever been out of the capital city, much less the Earth Kingdom. I thought Azula had sent for me because she was giving her pathetic older brother another chance to prove he was worth something to our father. When I woke up in Ba Sing Se, she said I'd been sick."

She had to keep herself from getting sappy. She had to, because she didn't, wasn't going to cry. "So . . . we could tell you anything, and you wouldn't have any reason not to believe us?" she asked, slyly. That would be funny, anyhow. And when he did remember properly, they could have a knock-down, drag-out sparring match. She liked fighting with Sparky. He never held back.

"I remember a few things, and one of them is that when you sound like that, you're up to something flower petal."

"You . . ." she glared in his direction in faked fury. "You just wait. I'll get you sometime." She stomped away muttering about why he had to remember that, because it was just like normal, and it was too close, but too far at once.

The rhythms of their group still stuttered and went off-tempo. There was a comfortable groove where Zuko should be, and he wasn't there. His voice had sounded right, but the way Sokka stood, the way they shifted their weight, he hadn't yet returned to his place, and it hurt to hear, to feel it. That unpredictability made her flee, because if she didn't she was going to cry.

It took all of dinner to get herself back together, and listening to the way no one could or would welcome him back, the way he'd upset the delicate balance of the group with its new additions made Toph angry with everyone. Hadn't she told them he was telling the truth? That should be more than enough for Katara, who trusted everyone for no good reason, and Sokka, who sometimes got Zuko better than anyone else ever could.

Well, if they weren't going to let him back in, she would. He was easy to find in his isolated corner, and she poked him with her foot. "What?" he asked.

"Move over, Weepy," Toph declared, shoving him over inside his tent.

Zuko asked, "What are you doing here?" even as he let her push him around.

She crawled into his bedroll. "I'm cold and you're a firebender," she informed him. She would never ever tell him that it was because she was trying to get him back into his proper place. "You're warmer than everyone else and you don't try to talk at me all night or make weird noises." That was also true, and Toph did resent Katara's hogging of the nice, warm firebender before. Maybe she could get a nice replacement stuffed badger mole and leave Katara to deal with the lack.

"You know," he told her conversationally, "You stink. Are you trying to escape your delicate nature, Flower Petal?" he asked her. Her face buried in his chest, Toph smiled. That was good. It was normal and right and _her_ Sparky.

"I'll get you for that in the morning," she grumbled at him instead of being sappy. "Go to sleep before you start accusing me of being nice to you or something."

"Like I'd ever do that," Zuko sniped right back.

His heart kept pounding like he was thinking, his muscles stayed all tense, and Toph fancied she could almost hear his brain clanking around. "Stop thinking and go to sleep," she snapped. "I can hear your heart beating weirdly, so stop it."

"Yes Toph," he said obediently.

He was more than likely Katara's, Toph thought as they both settled, but she closed her eyes and let herself dream for just one moment about a big house, her and Sparky and kids that they never made to feel like they weren't real.


	31. What is love?

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: KaliAnn had asked for Azula and Aiko scenes, but rather than just have one, I have a few places I plan to put them. Basically, I'm trying to sort of track the development of the Azula/Aiko sisterhood/friendship thing over a while. And I'm really sorry it's taking me so long to get on with finishing this up.

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><p>Aiko stared curiously at her sister. For all that she'd been trapped here in the Fire Palace for weeks on end, talking to the girl nearly daily and sometimes more than once a day, she found her a puzzle.<p>

Azula's determination to take over the world, the way she didn't care for others, that was all clearly based on both her upbringing and the innate and out of control passion of a firebender. Her insistence that firebenders were the greatest and most important of benders was irritating, but understandable. While an objective thinker might understand how the airbender's philosophical and knowledge-based worldview made them the ones meant to be leaders by the spirits, no one likes to think of themselves as being less important.

Given so much time spent with Thuan, she had to admit that there was no clear hierarchy of superiority of the other three bending types, each had their good points and bad. It was just the terrible influence of people like the royal family of the Fire Nation that had turned the firebenders to such a destructive way of being.

But nothing seemed to make any sort of dent in her sister's perspective. It was as though she could not stop irrationally clinging to the belief that it was the Fire Nation's destiny to spread outward and take over the world. No appeals to her on behalf of the innocent who had done nothing to the Fire Nation would shake her resolve, not a word of logic that the Fire Nation did not 'deserve' to rule because they were 'superior', nothing convinced her.

It was the day after Zuko fled the palace, having finally come to the realisation that something was wrong, (and wasn't she relieved to hear that it was due to the manipulations of the Dai Li that his change of heart had happened in the first place and not a reversion to his baser nature) Azula came storming up to Aiko's cell. "He's gone, permanently, and now Mai's muttering when she thinks I can't hear about being forced into a relationship. What is her problem? She's wanted Zuzu since we were children and he was bumbling around pretending he knew how to firebend. I gave him to her on a silver platter and she's still not happy."

"Maybe because she wanted his feelings for her to be genuine and not just caused by someone bending his mind to think something that isn't true?" Aiko offered mildly.

"What does that matter?" Azula asked her, sounding frustrated. "What matters is results. She got the results she wanted, what else matters?"

As patiently as she could, Aiko told her, "Because it wasn't the result she wanted. His genuine feelings _were_ the result she wanted, not just him." Then in a flash of inspiration, Aiko added, "You didn't like the Zuko you got after the Dai Li had their way with him either."

"But that's because he wasn't acting right!" Azula exclaimed. She whirled around a slammed a fist towards the wall, fire splashing harmlessly against it. Aiko suppressed the urge to tisk. Clearly firebenders built for resistance to fire because of the overactive temper of the people. A prod of conscience in Thuan's voice reminded her that she was in a prison, and it would be a poor jail cell that could be escaped from by simple application of fire.

"Why do you think he was acting right for Mai?" Aiko countered. "She wanted the him he was before the Dai Li and you said he wasn't acting the same."

Azula was smart enough to fill in the blanks. "Pshht, that's ridiculous. He was dancing attendance on her, convinced he was 'in wuuuuv' with her, whatever that means," she added in a sarcastic aside. "They were constantly kissing and all over each other, what else is there?"

"The depth of emotion you feel for another person who truly understands you and who you understand that way in return? A person who is so important to you that you're willing to change who you are and how you act in order to keep them with you and they're willing to do the same?" Aiko's aggravation with Azula's inability to understand these most fundamental of human emotions bubbled over. "When I met Thuan I was convinced that, even though I felt the ruling family of the Fire Nation was the most evil institution on earth, being a part of it somehow made me better. He helped me see that that's illogical, and after spending time with him, I wanted to think in those ways he did that make him so kind and generous to others." She blinked back tears a moment, because she missed her lover with a sharp ache that never faded, worried about him out in the wider world, unprotected from the war by the idiots at the Ba Sing Se enclave who didn't think a nonbender of his social status was worth their time.

Her sister was staring at her intently. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Azula looked to be examining Aiko's inner self in some way only known to the firebender. After a very long pause, she finally said, "You . . . you mean that. You really mean that there's some sort of . . . feeling . . . _thing_." It was clear that either the words about love and friendship and caring were something Azula disdained, or that her education had been lacking in a vocabulary relating to those concepts.

Aiko took a chance, and decided to assume that perhaps no one had ever offered Azula an education on concepts relating to family and love. "There _is_ a sort of feeling thing," she said, searching for a way to explain something as nebulous as the bond of love between two people. "You feel a lot of things about Zuko, right? There's annoyance when he does something stupid, amusement when he tries and fails to act dignified, respect when you see him working with his dao blades-"

"Oh, you mean those swords he took up with because he couldn't keep up with my bending?" Azula asked scathingly.

Shooting her a glance, Aiko corrected sharply, "I mean the blades the palace weaponmaster declared him to be a prodigy with."

That halted Azula. "Did he?"

"He did," Aiko said. "I have this from Mother."

"Hmm."

Aiko continued with her original thought. "But somewhere in there, there's another feeling, isn't there? Something that's not hate, annoyance, anger, respect, amusement. You maybe can't put a word to it, but it's a feeling you have that's the same as how you feel for dragon fruit, only far more intense, isn't it?"

Her sister stared at her, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, and then she suddenly seemed angry and practically ran from the room.

Progress at last. Maybe.


	32. Laughing

Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: So, this little ditty isn't necessarily worth the time, but it's one of the bits that I'd been thinking of, even before snarkhunter asked for it. This is Katara's hysterical laughter at the WAT when Zuko says he can't firebend anymore.

* * *

><p>Aang and Zuko had headed off that morning to start Aang's training in firebending, and Katara had busied herself with cleaning and fixing and mending and anything else she could do with her hands to keep from foaming at the mouth and running shrieking down the mountain. She'd messed up, she knew that, and Toph had claimed Zuko as her own stuffed tiger seal. It was almost worse now than it was before he'd come back and her mind was whirling around like a squirrelmunk in a cage.<p>

"I . . ." Zuko was standing awkwardly in the entranceway, Aang a few steps away as he spoke. "I don't think I can teach the Avatar firebending," he finished, unable to truly say it.

"Why not?" demanded Sokka.

"I've lost my stuff," Zuko said, obviously avoiding the issue.

"Don't look at me. I didn't touch your stuff," Toph declared. Katara felt a rush of gratitude to her often disgusting earthbender friend for giving them all some normalcy to cling to.

Zuko shot her a look. "You sure of that?" he asked dryly.

Sokka interrupted. "And that's not what you meant at all. Why can't you teach Aang?" He fixed Zuko with a firm look.

"My firebending," Zuko said. "It's gone."

There was a pause, then a burst of hysterical laughter escaped from Katara. When everyone turned to look at her, she flushed, mortified by the helpless outburst. "I . . . it's . . ." she trailed off, clapping a hand over her mouth and fled.

She ran down the halls, vaguely sensing that someone was coming after her, but not wanting to talk to anybody. After all, it wasn't funny, that wasn't why she'd laughed. She'd laughed because all this guilt and anger and everything just welled up inside her and had to come out. If she hadn't laughed, she'd have screamed.

She wasn't fast enough and Haru pulled her over. "What was that, Katara?" he asked. "Because from here I don't see what's so funny about Lee – Zuko, losing his bending."

"Oh?" she asked, feeling reckless and a little crazy. "See, he's lost it, he's hurt and everything, and it's because I tried to help him. I tried to make him better, so now he's worse!"

"Katara-"

"I didn't even realise when we were fighting under Ba Sing Se that he'd been mindbended by the Dai Li," she continued, right overtop of Haru. If he was going to tell her it was wrong of her to act like this, she didn't want to hear it. She knew that. That's why she was trying to hide before she said anything she'd regret. If he was going to say it wasn't her fault, she didn't want to hear it, because that was wrong and it was. "I'd seen Jet, I'd seen the Joo Dees, I knew what it looked like and I knew he'd never do it, but I still just believed it. I should have known!" she rambled, unable to stop.

Haru reached out and touched her shoulder, but Katara just shrugged him off. "I did it before, you know?" she said, words just pouring out. "When he saved everyone from that volcano, I just got all accusatory and he ran away. It was my fault. I got you thrown into prison because I was trying to help. My fault. I try to take Toph out so that she'll enjoy a little girly time, maybe get that it's not all bad being girly and those mean girls were just so awful and Toph's never agreed since, and it's all my fault. It's always my fault and I should just stop helping. Look at him. _I made his bending go away!_"

Katara finished on a wail and clapped her hands over her mouth again to try to silence the hysteria.

"Oh, Katara," Haru said softly. "It'll be alright. First, it's not your fault, it's the Dai Li's for doing that to him. You tried to make him better, they tried to take away his memories. As for everything else, I don't know what happened with that volcano, but I do know that you saved us in my village, okay? You got us all to fight back, to drive the Fire Nation away and take back our pride and freedom."

That was sweet of him, but she shook her head silently, lips pressed together before she poured more of her guilt all over him.

Haru eyed her a moment and then pulled her close, and it was just so _nice_, leaning on someone for a change, especially with the way that Zuko had been gone for so long, and Katara shook and half-sobbed against Haru until she stopped having a fit. When she pulled away, she felt better. Calmer. "I got your shirt wet," she observed, raising a hand and pulling all the wet out of the tunic.

"And now you've got it unwet," Haru told her. "And there's the Katara I know. You've messed up sometimes, I'm not arguing, but you always fix it, and if there's any way for you to heal L-Zuko up, you'll find it."

Feeling better, or at least a little less like losing her mind everywhere, Katara straightened up. "Thank you, Haru."

"It's the least I can do," he told her with a small smile.

She took a deep breath and headed back out there. Aang was explaining something, and it made her wince as he said, "I mean, bending is partly mental, right? I'm having all this trouble with firebending because I can't make myself think like . . . a firebender," he finished. "Maybe what Azula did has messed with Zuko's ability to get to his bending."

"Or maybe my trying to fix his head messed him up more," Katara said as she came back. Haru was right, it was time now for her to fix her mistakes. The sense of resolve didn't help her with looking him in the eye though, and the expression on his face, when she got herself to look, was so blank, such a carefully emotionless mask, it made her crumble inside a little.

He'd never forgive her, but that was fine, she'd never forgive herself.


End file.
